Final Fantasy Hacktics

General => Archives => Tethical => Topic started by: Kivutar on February 25, 2011, 04:38:42 am

Title: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on February 25, 2011, 04:38:42 am
The goal

The goal is not to make a complete game, it's too much work for me alone. But I think I could release a small playable demo.
The game would be online and PvP, no AI for now, no classes for now, something very minimal and easy to code.
However, it is an open source project so I try to make things as reusable as possible. So the project may be usefull to people wanting to code a more RPG-oriented FFT, by provinding classes for battle mechanics and the graphical engine.

Technical details

Temporary server written in Perl with Dancer. (Of course I plan to drop HTTP wich is not suitable for the project.) Server written in python using the datagram protocol.
Client written in python using Panda3D engine.
Source code on github https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical)
Website: http://tethical.kivutar.me (http://tethical.kivutar.me)

I'm currently working on



Changelog

09/29/2011




08/20/2011




06/23/2011




06/17/2011


06/09/2011




06/04/2011




06/02/2011




05/31/2011




05/23/2011




05/21/2011



05/17/2011


05/03/2011




04/26/2011




04/25/2011




04/22/2011




04/21/2011




04/20/2011





04/16/2011




04/11/2011




04/10/2011




04/08/2011




04/05/2011




03/29/2011




03/25/2011




03/19/2011




03/13/2011




03/09/2011




03/06/2011




02/27/2011




02/26/2011





02/23/2011




02/19/2011




See also

[/list]
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Eternal on February 25, 2011, 04:46:25 am
Very nice work! Keep it up! :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pride on February 25, 2011, 04:47:49 am
Between this and dbp's project, I have high hopes for an online pvp fft. I simply can't wait ^_^
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Dome on February 25, 2011, 05:20:00 am
Awesome stuff
Keep up the amazing work!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on February 25, 2011, 05:56:43 pm
Thanks a lot for your support.
I added a new video.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on February 26, 2011, 07:47:30 pm
Holy crap where are all these game programmers coming from crawling out the woodwork. If it is at all possible to merge this project with dbp's that would be amazing. Two heads are better than one and there is no reason to have two similar projects not at least contributing to eachother.

Amazing work keep it up!

The DREAM is coming true.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MasterGrand on February 27, 2011, 03:18:15 am
Last we can play FFT online .

Great job keep it up !
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on February 27, 2011, 04:02:23 am
Ok, I PMed dbp about sharing things.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: dbp on February 27, 2011, 09:23:36 am
Hello  :D
Good job so far Kivutar !

About merging project together, i feel like it will be difficult because of the different programming language.
I think that both technologies will do a different job, with good and bad points.

For example, any kind of 3D will be really faster than Flash.
But, Flash, is better to play online form any computer that have Flash Player installed.

But, about the sounds, musics, textures, and stuff like that, i am 100% ready to share !
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on February 27, 2011, 11:04:23 am
Hi bdp, thanks a lot for your quick reply! :D

Sure merging the clients is not possible and we both don't want to do so. But what about sharing the same server?

I'm also interested in seeing some algorythms you have implemented better than me, like the one that returns walkable tiles for a character. (Mine doesnt take in account in wich teams characters are.)

In addition to sounds, music and textures, we could also make our maps and spritesheets compatible.

Do you plan to opensource your project (or at least share the source with few people)?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: mav on February 27, 2011, 12:12:53 pm
Where are you people coming from?! This is so impressive. Great work, keep at it.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: dbp on February 27, 2011, 12:26:07 pm
Sharing the same server may be a good idea.
Also, making compatible the maps and spritesheets looks cool.

I also thought about do an open source project for the future.
But for now, everything is still in beta test, so i need to be sure to have 100% efficient code before sharing.

But, i feel like i have a good control of the code itself. So, just need some clean up and a lot of time :D

How do you plan to make your game online and multiplayer ?
What server side program ? sockets ?

I am going to use Smartfox Server, i believe that it is the most correct solution for Flash developers.
What about you ?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on February 28, 2011, 03:46:00 am
QuoteAlso, making compatible the maps and spritesheets looks cool.


maps:

My map models are made with blender. You can find it here https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/tree/master/client/models/maps (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/tree/master/client/models/maps). For now, textures are 20x20 images applied to each tiles. In a second time, I will try to export a global texture to allow graphists to easyly customize each tile and bake soft shadows like it is the case in FFT.

On server side, the map is like this https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/server/maps/Test%20City.json (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/server/maps/Test%20City.json). A json file listing tiles. I plan to use slope heights to scale the slope on z instead of using a high number of slope types.

I try to stay as close as possible of FFT but using easy-to-edit formats. It will allow people to export maps from the ISO if they want too.

spritesheet

For now I use something not efficient like this https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/client/textures/sprites/misty.png (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/client/textures/sprites/misty.png) because my sprite class does not handle flipping yet. Idealy I would use spritesheets exported by ShiShi.

QuoteHow do you plan to make your game online and multiplayer ?
What server side program ? sockets ?


For now, I'm using a minimal http based server that I developped using Perl and the Dancer framework. You can take a look at the code here: https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/server/server.pl (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/server/server.pl). It is easy to read and extensible, but HTTP is clearly a poor choice as my clients will have to flood the server with requests to know what the other player is doing.

Reading the Panda3D doc, I found this: http://www.panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Networking (http://www.panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Networking). I will try this if we cannot agree on sharing a server.

Concerning Smartfox Server, I quickly read their documentation. It looks like the best choice for an ActionScript game. Full featured, well documented, high level, with a tutorial for board games.
The downside for me is that there is no python API for client side. (and I am too lazy to write one). I thought that I could use their BlueBox wich is HTTP based too, but it is just tuneling so I will have to parse the packets in this case too.
There is also the fact that it is very heavy and has a cost...

Looks like sharing a server will be less easy that I thought due to client side technologies we use :/
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on February 28, 2011, 02:51:31 pm
Have you guys considered Common Lisp?  I can shoot you some books on it, if you want them.  It can be faster than C++ in some cases, it's memory usage is roughly equivalent to Java (garbage collection), and it's very flexible.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: dbp on February 28, 2011, 09:15:35 pm
QuoteMy map models are made with blender.

Me 2 ! But the big difference is that i just made a bunch of typical tiles like :
Tile : (height definable)
Slope : (height definable)
Tree : (height definable)

I believe that with these 3 type, you can do almost every map you want.
But it also use more memory especially in Flash.

Quoteand bake soft shadows like it is the case in FFT.

Do you say that you can bake shadows in real time with Panda3D ?
Flash sadly can't do that.

QuoteLooks like sharing a server will be less easy that I thought due to client side technologies we use :/

That's right.
Also, i believe that we do not have the same way of doing things. So maybe my path-finding or area-finding algorithm may not be totally appropriate for your approach.
At least the general concepts are the same.

Anyway, even if we can only share a little bit of our work, let's do it !
And for my project, i don't know how far i am gonna go with it, and how long i can work on it. It is very time consuming.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on March 01, 2011, 03:32:36 am
QuoteI believe that with these 3 type, you can do almost every map you want.
But it also use more memory especially in Flash.

It was my first approach too. But using a single model makes easier to do this type of maps: http://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=83 (the bridge), http://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=63 (the door and the guillotine), http://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=36 (the steeple). And makes exporting official maps a lot easier.

QuoteDo you say that you can bake shadows in real time with Panda3D ?
Flash sadly can't do that.

No I didn't mean that (sorry for my english, I'm French). Panda can bake realtime shadows, but I'd like to keep close to official FFT maps in which the shadows are baked in the textures. I meant that exporting the whole map texture in a single image make it easier for texture artist, they won't have to know how to use blender to contribute textures.

QuoteAlso, i believe that we do not have the same way of doing things.

Yes you're right. We have to admit that we made different choices.

QuoteAnyway, even if we can only share a little bit of our work, let's do it !

Sure

QuoteAnd for my project, i don't know how far i am gonna go with it, and how long i can work on it. It is very time consuming.

I know what you mean. I feel exactly the same. But your project is very good. Please don't let it die like Calvin Chen did. Reinventing the wheel is fun, but not 3 times.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: dbp on March 01, 2011, 06:18:30 am
I am French too ! :D

QuoteBut using a single model makes easier to do this type of maps: http://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=83 (the bridge), http://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=63 (the door and the guillotine), http://ffhacktics.com/maps.php?id=36 (the steeple). And makes exporting official maps a lot easier.


That is right, but, with a simple Map Editor, even a tile based map construction would recreate these maps without any problems.

QuoteReinventing the wheel is fun, but not 3 times.

Yeah...
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on March 01, 2011, 08:14:31 pm
Viva La Revolucion de FFH!!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on March 02, 2011, 02:38:12 am
QuoteI am French too !

Realy?! I thought from your profile that you were japanese!

QuoteYeah...

I'm glad you edited this before I start trolling my own topic, thanks god xD

Concerning the game, I started rewritting the camera handler. This week end I will be on hollydays for 5 days (without the net) and hope to have time to code or at least refactor the codebase.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: dbp on March 02, 2011, 03:55:21 am
QuoteRealy?! I thought from your profile that you were japanese!

Yeah, French living in Japan.

QuoteI'm glad you edited this before I start trolling my own topic, thanks god xD

I do not want to enter into a debate either, thanks god too :D

That is very cool, i hope you can achieve what you want, i am looking forward to see new features.
Don't forget to post any video if you made some significant changes !

By the way, will your game be available for MAC ?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on March 02, 2011, 05:09:56 am
QuoteBy the way, will your game be available for MAC ?

I heard that panda3d runs fine on Mac. And there is a runtime for firefox, ie and safari too. But I never tested it.
I'd love to be able to play this or flashtics on an ipad or on a wii. Making a console game is such a child dream.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on March 09, 2011, 01:59:04 am
I updated the first post with a video showing the first steps of online gaming in tethical. The worst is over now.
I plan to add next the attack action, so the battle can come to an end. Then I will polish the code and the gameplay, in order to get some contributors.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on March 25, 2011, 02:57:00 am
Added a new video showing progress in BGM, sound effects and GUI.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Eternal on March 25, 2011, 05:09:40 am
Very nice progress! It's exciting to see it all coming together! :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Atma on March 29, 2011, 04:42:18 pm
I'm definitely stoked for the potential of this project and all like it. 
@Kivutar 
QuoteFor now I use something not efficient like this https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/client/textures/sprites/misty.png because my sprite class does not handle flipping yet. Idealy I would use spritesheets exported by ShiShi.

there is actually one very crucial benefit to NOT using the original sprite sheets.  Flipping means u'r gonna always have symmetrical character designs, or the obvious mirrored sprites of the old days.  ( eye patces, shields, etc switching sides when u flip). 
i'd imagine it wouldn't be to hard to use the frames from shishi and make a program that could batch convert sprites to whatever layout u want ur sheets to be. 
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Xifanie on March 29, 2011, 10:22:20 pm
Look, this is the difference between Frenchies and Quebecers. Quebecers can't code crap.
I couldn't even finish the event editor.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on March 30, 2011, 07:49:47 am
@Atma: very interesting remark. I will keep my actual spritesheet then. Xifanie already made this a script like this to export the spritesheets to bdp's flashtics format. Moding them to fit my format is easy. However, I'm a linux user and I did not spend too much time trying to run ShiShi (wich is .NET based) on linux.

Anyway, thank you all for your words of encouragement. :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Atma on March 31, 2011, 03:35:37 am
<3  
if ur gonna go and rebuild an engine, may as well give urself more customization.  if u wanted to keep the arms separate or combined per frame doesn't matter much.  Maybe on the size of the sheet, but i think our computers can handle an image file a lil larger than it was 15 odd years ago.  
as for mirroring/flipping, it doesn't let u make a character that isn't symmetrical without it looking a lil dumb.  eye patches, bangs, a feather in a hat, and other things wouldn't be possible otherwise.  makes me think of Street Fighter... Sagat and his eye patch, or more dramatically, Gill from Street Fighter 3.  
it may be a bit more work if u want to do this, but now it's at least possible, and if u are still making a symmetrical character, then it only takes a second to do a quick 'Flip Horizontal'
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on April 02, 2011, 09:26:53 am
This project is coming along amazingly. Great work Kivutar. Make sure to ask if you need help with any resources or anything.

I feel that an image for like "Enemy Turn" and "Player Turn" would be helpful when the different teams switch.

Also why are the characters moving so slowly?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 03, 2011, 04:01:08 am
Hi Cheetah! Welcome back.

QuoteMake sure to ask if you need help with any resources or anything.

I heard you like to sketch maps. Or is it somebody else? I don't remember.
It would be helpfull to have more than one map for when I will code jumps.
If some people are willing to modelize map, or to texture a map, I can record a video tutorial showing how to create maps for tethical.

QuoteI feel that an image for like "Enemy Turn" and "Player Turn" would be helpful when the different teams switch.

I totaly agree. If I recall correctly, there is an animation like this in WotL PVP. I can't find it on youtube.

I am also looking for the active tile texture. The blue animated one. If anybody can find it in the ISO, I'd like to have it please.

QuoteAlso why are the characters moving so slowly?

Fixed https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/commits/master (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/commits/master) :)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Zetaro on April 04, 2011, 11:31:58 am
just saw this project and hope that it is complete one day. Please keep up the excellent work Kivutar!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 05, 2011, 08:43:14 am
Thanks Zetaro.

I uploaded a video showing the recent progress. Teams are still randomly generated, but I removed the 2 hardcoded accounts, and many people can now log in and run parties. The video shows 2 parties running independently on the same server.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Darkholme on April 05, 2011, 10:01:04 am
Awesome Stuff Kivutar. I like the progress.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 08, 2011, 03:28:20 am
Hi Darkholme, I hope we'll manage to add the keyboard support to everything. Have you finaly read the code?

I added the video showing the new animated lobby interface.
You can also see Ramza's sprite at the end.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Darkholme on April 08, 2011, 03:54:14 am
Quote from: Kivutar on April 08, 2011, 03:28:20 am
Hi Darkholme, I hope we'll manage to add the keyboard support to everything. Have you finaly read the code?

I added the video showing the new animated lobby interface.
You can also see Ramza's sprite at the end.

Negatory. You know that essay I mentioned I was working on?

It's still kicking my ass; it's 4 days late; and the last day I can hand it in and still get a mark is sunday. (And it's worth 40% of the class mark). Heh. It's been brutal. But one way or another; I'll be done by monday.

Then I plan to get into things I'm actually interested in (Namely Tethical, Preparing for a summer Tabletop RPG Campaign using a new RPG system I've never tried before, and hopefully having some time to get back into leatherworking finally (since classes end tomorrow).

[edit]
That new menu looks fantastic!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 10, 2011, 11:27:15 am
QuoteNegatory. You know that essay I mentioned I was working on?

It's still kicking my ass; it's 4 days late; and the last day I can hand it in and still get a mark is sunday. (And it's worth 40% of the class mark). Heh. It's been brutal. But one way or another; I'll be done by monday.

:mrgreen: This remembers me when I was in school.

I uploaded the new video. But the sound is messed up, there is an offset.

I thought a lot about adding keyboard and joypad support. It's not going to be easy... But adding the helper messages convinced me that playing with a joypad or keyboard is better than mouse.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 11, 2011, 05:26:29 pm
The new video demonstrates the first steps in displaying character status.

This feature is still incomplete and inconsistant, mostly because of the use of the mouse and its hover state instead of the keyboard.

But strangely it makes the battle look more dynamic.

Adding keyboard support is becoming my first priority.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on April 11, 2011, 06:00:13 pm
Still looking amazing. I don't know if this has been mentioned, but the characters need to move across the screen a bit faster when they are walking. They are rather slow right now, unless that is due to hardware constraints or something.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Darkholme on April 12, 2011, 03:21:31 am
This is starting to be pretty sweet Kiv. I'm going to look at some of the source tomorrow.

Nah. No hardware limitations. He's running it on a PC. it's just a matter of picking the right speeds to move your characters at and the right speeds to play the animations.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MasterGrand on April 14, 2011, 04:59:03 pm
Please Kivitar keep up work .
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 15, 2011, 06:37:45 pm
Thank you all.

I began to code the keyboard support. As expected, a lot of code refactoring is needed. But you can see the first results of these change in the new video in the first post.

+ minor changes :

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on April 16, 2011, 10:59:39 am
This is some pretty awesome stuff, keep it up!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 20, 2011, 03:48:18 am
Thanks Kaffe !

The new video shows some progress on keyboard handling. The battle is now almost fully controlable with the keyboard, the last thing to change is the menu.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Durbs on April 20, 2011, 04:43:51 pm
Neat. Do you intend to put the non-generic characters in?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on April 21, 2011, 06:34:36 am
I'm not a coder/programmer/hacker, but if there's anything you want help with (I have no idea what that would be), send me a PM and I'll see if I can be of help in anyway. :]
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 21, 2011, 07:22:32 am
@Durbs: Sure, as soon as I have their sprite exported to dbp's ffflashtics format.

@Kaffe: Thank you, I will send you a PM. I need those sprite (I can't run shishi cause i'm a linux only user) and someone to test the windows installer (for the same reason).

Edit: the new video shows a new map + the keyboard driven battle menu. The battle phase is now 100% keyboard controlled.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Darkholme on April 21, 2011, 01:52:01 pm
I can get you all the sprites if you'd like, and I can test the windows version. My time seems more limited than I thought it would be, but I have enough time for that.\
[Edit] Sent to your email.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on April 21, 2011, 02:58:38 pm
Quote from: Kivutar on April 21, 2011, 07:22:32 am
(I can't run shishi cause i'm a linux only user) and someone to test the windows installer (for the same reason).

I know how you feel.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pride on April 21, 2011, 03:46:18 pm
Your progress is fantastic! Keep up the great work ^_^
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 22, 2011, 06:57:55 am
It's nice to see people liking the project. Very motivating.

QuoteI know how you feel.

Yes, all these .NET tools are so difficult to port to other OSes. Thanks god, gomtuu used easier technologies so I had a starting point to learn 3D and maps.

QuoteI can get you all the sprites if you'd like, and I can test the windows version. My time seems more limited than I thought it would be, but I have enough time for that.
[Edit] Sent to your email.

Thanks Darkholme. Can one of you ask Xifanie for her Palette Editor script to convert these bmp to the format dbp use? Or better, mod her script to export directly to my format. (Wich is there: https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/blob/master/client/textures/sprites/ramza.png )
Converting the sprite by hand is a very tedious task, and I developping the engine takes all my time. So this script would be of a great help.

I just added a new video showing this changes :
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on April 22, 2011, 12:00:39 pm
Oh man that looks great!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Eternal on April 22, 2011, 12:16:51 pm
This gets more and more amazing with each update! Amazing work, Kivu!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Dome on April 22, 2011, 12:41:55 pm
Quote from: Eternal248 on April 22, 2011, 12:16:51 pm
This gets more and more amazing with each update! Amazing work, Kivu!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on April 23, 2011, 12:17:46 am
Quote from: Dome on April 22, 2011, 12:41:55 pm
Quote from: Eternal248 on April 22, 2011, 12:16:51 pm
This gets more and more amazing with each update! Amazing work, Kivu!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on April 23, 2011, 12:03:44 pm
Hurray for faster walking speeds, it looks perfect.

This is an amazing project. Seriously tell us how we can help.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on April 25, 2011, 12:37:38 am
dayaaaam
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 25, 2011, 04:20:02 pm
Thank you all.

QuoteThis is an amazing project. Seriously tell us how we can help.

Yes, I will need help from the community for many things. Unfortunately, the project is still very immature. It is a little bit early to ask for external help as sprites and map formats are going to change in the next weeks. But as soon as these format become stable, I would like to add:


I added a new video showing the first steps in displaying battle intro and game over screens.

[edit] Even if the project is immature, you can already start exploring one of the 3 ways exposed.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on April 26, 2011, 08:45:45 am
To help you, I've added a basic .OBJ (it's a plain-text 3d model format) to export maps into a format Blender can read to the map2gl Python program.

Download map2gl (with export to .OBJ feature) (http://www.darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/%5B535%5Dmap2gl17%2Bexport.zip)

How to use map2gl to export to OBJ and open in Blender:

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Eternal on April 26, 2011, 04:05:53 pm
Welcome to FFH, lirmont! Thanks for the tool, it should help Kivutar immensely!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 26, 2011, 04:33:29 pm
lirmont, I LOVE YOU!

Look at what you did.



This is awesome. I will wrote a script to export all the maps.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on April 26, 2011, 10:51:47 pm
Holy crap that is freaking awesome. Wow Lirmont, I dub this the greatest first contribution post on FFH ever.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on April 27, 2011, 01:13:41 pm
How will you improve the sprites, maps, and other graphics of FFT?  Make them bigger and zoom out so the detail is greater but the aspect ratio is the same?  Allow PNG?  I'm pumped about the official maps being playable, but we eventually need to be able to make our own, better, maps for legal reasons and just to make things prettier.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on April 27, 2011, 02:21:26 pm
Good thoughts Pickle.

1) I think expanding the screen ratio over the original FFT, more like the PSP wide screen, is a great idea.
2) Bigger maps, such as expanding the current ones and making larger ones would be awesome.
3) More units, if you have more room you can have more units battling at once. Such as Tactics Ogre.

I worked really hard at finishing a completely custom map, it is tough work though. Placing the textures was definitely the most time consuming part and where I got stuck.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on April 28, 2011, 01:11:08 am
Amazing. It looks perfect.. I can't believe how well this is flowing along.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on April 28, 2011, 04:12:59 am
QuoteHow will you improve the sprites, maps, and other graphics of FFT?

I won't do it myself, because I am a developper, I don't excel at pixel art or 3D modeling, even if I do it sometimes when it is realy needed.
But I will do my best to make it realy easy to mod, by using simple and open formats like png, text for configuration files, etc.

QuoteMake them bigger and zoom out so the detail is greater but the aspect ratio is the same?

You don't have to do such a complicated thing to improve the detail level.
Just open one of my spritesheet with your favorite image editor, double the size of the image, do your painting, save, reload the game, and you are done.
The engine is 3D so it only cares about ratio, as long as you keep the ratio of the spritesheet, it will work out of the box.
You can do exactly the same trick to improve map textures details.

QuoteAllow PNG?

PNG is already the format used by the engine.

QuoteI'm pumped about the official maps being playable, but we eventually need to be able to make our own, better, maps for legal reasons and just to make things prettier.

I feel the same. These maps are of a great help to have a lot of use cases to code the characters moves. But If we realy want to release something one day, or just if the engine becomes more famous, there will be the legal issue.
This is a common case in game engine emulation, and the most adopted solution is to distribute the engine with no copyrighted content, but a small amount of custom content instead. So people can get started. Then we can provide all the script to extract the official data from the game, so the users that "own the real game" can rip their CD to an ISO image and extract the data using our scripts, and finaly run their own tethical server.
With this, the project will remain open source and not suable. One of us could own a server with copyrighted content in one of those states where the law is more permissive. And I believe that most of the people here are creative and will prefer to start from nothing to make various games with various looks and gameplay.

QuoteI think expanding the screen ratio over the original FFT, more like the PSP wide screen, is a great idea.

This is already the case, you can resize the window to what you want, for exemple 600x200, and you won't see fat strechted characters, you will just see more of the map on the side. Like on the PSP.

QuoteBigger maps, such as expanding the current ones and making larger ones would be awesome.

Yes custom maps are already possible. Maps are composed of 3 things :
- the 3D model, made using blender or whatever tool you like, then exported to the .egg format
- the texture to be applied on the model : a simple png file
- a text file describing tiles, wich are walkables or not, etc
So you can create realy big maps if you want.

QuoteMore units, if you have more room you can have more units battling at once. Such as Tactics Ogre.

Same here. We are not limited, you can already have as many characters on a map as you want to.
The engine was also build in the early time to allow more than 2 teams on a battle. I lost this feature during developement, cause I wanted to have something to show earlier. But I don't abondon this idea. I will do it.

QuoteI worked really hard at finishing a completely custom map, it is tough work though. Placing the textures was definitely the most time consuming part and where I got stuck.

Yes, I made a custom map too (the one you see in some of the videos), not with ganesha but with blender, modeling takes about 1 hour. Appliying the UV map is something like 2~3hours. Drawing a nice PNG texture can take many days of work.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MasterGrand on April 30, 2011, 10:19:23 am
Well done Kivutar & All members of the Forum will support you to the end .

Good luck
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Dome on April 30, 2011, 01:06:54 pm
This is so epic, that even if it was in spam I wouldn't troll it
AT ALL

Freaking epic/10
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 03, 2011, 03:11:58 am
Thank all you for your encouragements.

I can not post a new video for now, but I made some progress on the official map exporter.

I modded Ganesha to export the tiles infos of a map to my server. It almost work. I need to rewrite some small parts of the code to be even closer to the original logic of official maps. The good news is that water depth will be one of the befenit of this rewrite.

Lights export have seen some progress too, but it's still not that.

@lirmont: some map exported by your code are missing polygons. I took a look at your code. Do you think it can be due to display bits, the flag that says wich part of the map become invisible according to camera angle (see point 12 of this page http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Maps (http://ffhacktics.com/wiki/Maps)) ?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on May 03, 2011, 03:20:03 am
If you want the full map, re-download the zip file or comment out (or add the flag "and not self.exportToOBJFile == True" to the condition) the following lines in viewer.py:

Quoteif self.use_cutaway and not vis_angle == None and not poly["vis"] == None:
   if poly["vis"][(7-vis_angle)+6] == 1:
       continue
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 03, 2011, 10:28:03 am
@lirmont, thanks for this quick reply.

This code was already commented, but setting self.use_cutaway to False made the trick.

I almost managed to flip normals during the export by editing your code like this:


f.write('vn') # write vn (vertex normal direction)
f.write(' ')
f.write(str(-vertex["q"]))
f.write(' ')
f.write(str(-vertex["p"]))
f.write(' ')
f.write(str(-vertex["r"]))
f.write('\n')



f.write('f') # write f (3d object face by order vertices exist in written OBJ file)
f.write(' ')
f.write(str(r))
f.write('/')
f.write(str(r))
f.write('/')
f.write(str(r))
f.write(' ')
f.write(str(r+2))
f.write('/')
f.write(str(r+2))
f.write('/')
f.write(str(r+1))
f.write(' ')
f.write(str(r+1))
f.write('/')
f.write(str(r+1))
f.write('/')
f.write(str(r+2))
f.write('\n')


As you can see, it worked for the textured polygons, but not on the others. Do you have an idea?

[EDIT] I found it, it was the map skirt.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on May 03, 2011, 01:12:54 pm
I didn't get that PM you promised. I feel unloved.

But I don't care. This is utter awesomeness, so even deprived of returned feelings of love, I greatly support what you're doing.

Unconditionally.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 03, 2011, 02:30:54 pm
@Kaffe: Oh I'm so sorry. :( I've been so much excited by this map stuff that I forgot to work on the Windows installer. Don't feel unloved, I send you this PM as soon as I need your help!

EDIT: I just added the new video showing 6 exported maps. You can see some bugs in the json exporter.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on May 03, 2011, 10:45:48 pm
Another big step Kivutar, you are making amazing progress. I am also surprised at how many of my comments had already been taken into account. Very exciting.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on May 04, 2011, 06:15:20 am
Re-download it. The "skirt" polygons had to have vertex normal directions calculated.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kokojo on May 05, 2011, 02:30:07 pm
Kivutar, would you like to check if your exporter works well with user-made maps? I have one I could share.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 05, 2011, 04:05:17 pm
@lirmont Thanks for your precious help.

@Kokojo I would love it. Can you send it to me please? I hope it is not too hard to include in the ISO using linux, or maybe I don't have to include it at all.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kokojo on May 05, 2011, 11:59:02 pm
http://kokojo.ffhacktics.com/

The download can be done there. You have to replace map100 files. This is the cemetary, usually.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on May 06, 2011, 12:36:02 am
Why, yes, I do believe it is fool-proof. (http://www.darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kokojo-custom.jpg)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 06, 2011, 03:41:26 am
The model is well exported, but the map logic is not :(

Take a look:

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on May 06, 2011, 11:57:13 am
Hmm that is disappointing. I will post my custom map as well to see if it is common problem of the map editor. Mine wont be quite so pretty but it should work.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 06, 2011, 04:30:53 pm
Thanks Cheetah, I'm waiting for your map.

[EDIT] We tried to play tethical online. It is too laggy. I think this is due to http and the way I use it (no threads). So I started rewritting the network layer using the datagram protocol (https://www.panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Datagram_Protoco (https://www.panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Datagram_Protoco)l). This implies rewritting the server in Python. It is a huge work, and there will be nothing graphical to show so there won't be videos for a while.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on May 08, 2011, 10:21:49 am
Go onward, soldier. You have our support.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on May 08, 2011, 10:38:59 am
This will probably end hilariously. "Screw hacking FFT...let's just mod tethical" XD
Then we'll change our site name to "TethicalOnline.com" and become a famous hotspot and do all this other bs x3 Like gusanos.
All we need to do is add a single player on top of the multiplayer so that we can share story modes with eachother :D and co-op. yummy co-op.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on May 08, 2011, 06:24:57 pm
Maybe we should start that homepage right away.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 09, 2011, 03:28:26 am
QuoteGo onward, soldier. You have our support.

Thanks. I rewrote the network code of the lobby. Now I have to write the one for the battle, wich is the big part because I have to translate the 3 libraries (map parsing, movement algorithms, attack algoritms) to python.

QuoteThis will probably end hilariously. "Screw hacking FFT...let's just mod tethical" XD
Then we'll change our site name to "TethicalOnline.com" and become a famous hotspot and do all this other bs x3 Like gusanos.

In a few years maybe :|

QuoteAll we need to do is add a single player on top of the multiplayer so that we can share story modes with eachother  and co-op. yummy co-op.

Now that the server libraries are going to be translated to python, we can use them directly in the client and have an offline mode.
Or maybe it would be smarter to let people run a local server to emulate an offline mode: IA could be bots. And adding storyline features like character dialogs and chaining battles directly into the online mode would allow a sort of co-op.
/me stops dreaming and starts to clean the code :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on May 09, 2011, 09:58:07 am
Dream on Kivutar, with enough time, blood, sweat, tears, blood, swearing, hatred, blood, hard work, and your blood, one day all of what I said will be more than possible. If dbp comes back, he seems specialized in the "offline mode" section of game programming, so you may want to talk to him about maybe customizable dialogue boxes and such x3
God knows if that doesn't happen a "Tethical RPing Group" will be made, and it'll be lulzy.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Atma on May 11, 2011, 06:16:46 am
so, when the engine is fully coded and running how will the non-programmer types edit settings like screen resolution, camera zoom, keyboard/button mapping, etc?  Also, are we going to need secondary programs for creating things like story events or characters, abilities and equipment?  if so, would it be possible for someone to start working on these, or at least keep the creation programs in mind?  i'm hoping that stuff like this would be possible for others to do so it's not all put on ur shoulders.  i'm just thinking that stuff like a map builder or something that works with ur program could be built in preparation of ur program.

oh, just to clarify what Pickle Girl Fanboy was talking about... are the 'units' essentially just a rectangular plane that a texture is assigned to?  and i guess the same for the terrain?  this means we can put any res image we want, right?

just a thought, most of the maps of FFT have been mainly flat squares, or inclines, but is it possible to add more terrain effects, so it appears more uneven?  or perhaps keep the flat/incline as is but allow for normal/displacement mapping of the textures to simulate depth?  (tho, just thinking about this... even if it is possible, it may be better to keep it simpler so it's more mod friendly for a broader range of people)

oh, and i <3 u  :oops:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 11, 2011, 01:36:53 pm
@Cheetah: the model exported well, but the logical export gave something unreadable...

Quote from: Kaffe on May 08, 2011, 06:24:57 pm
Maybe we should start that homepage right away.

I started it at http://tethical.kivutar.me/ (http://tethical.kivutar.me/). For now it is just a blog, but Drupal is very extendable.

Quoteso, when the engine is fully coded and running how will the non-programmer types edit settings like screen resolution, camera zoom, keyboard/button mapping, etc?

I am from the old school and strongly believe in text files, like JSON, YAML, etc.
But some of these things may end in the SQL database that will store the accounts and characters, so we can perform JOINs on it.

QuoteAlso, are we going to need secondary programs for creating things like story events or characters, abilities and equipment?

This sort of tools is very helpfull to make an engine user friendly. Typicaly when the configuration files are very complicated, like it is the case for the maps. (But is it not a need, even if it would be great).

Quoteif so, would it be possible for someone to start working on these, or at least keep the creation programs in mind?

Sure! For example, I really need a sprite exporter. The bad thing is that the destination format may change due to the design instability: we are in the very early stages of the developement.
A map editor would attract a lot of contributors.
To be honest, I have never hacked FFT and have no idea of what is event editing. If plan to add a storyline mode, I won't be the project leader for this part, just a developer.

Quotei'm hoping that stuff like this would be possible for others to do so it's not all put on ur shoulders.  i'm just thinking that stuff like a map builder or something that works with ur program could be built in preparation of ur program.

This is a very good idea. I think that the server side map format is quite stable now. A graphical editor to place tiles on a map is possible.

Quoteoh, just to clarify what Pickle Girl Fanboy was talking about... are the 'units' essentially just a rectangular plane that a texture is assigned to?  and i guess the same for the terrain?  this means we can put any res image we want, right?

Yes, you must keep the ratio, and the resolution must be a power of 2. But you can do it. You can double (or x4 or more) the resolution of sprites, GUI, map textures, fonts, all the PNG.

Quotejust a thought, most of the maps of FFT have been mainly flat squares, or inclines, but is it possible to add more terrain effects, so it appears more uneven?  or perhaps keep the flat/incline as is but allow for normal/displacement mapping of the textures to simulate depth?  (tho, just thinking about this... even if it is possible, it may be better to keep it simpler so it's more mod friendly for a broader range of people)

Yes it is possible to make the map model more precise. If you know how to use Blender, you can try it. The map logic has nothing to do with the look. You can already do that on FFT with Ganesha.

Quoteoh, and i <3 u

Thank you, i <3 you all@FFH :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on May 11, 2011, 04:02:04 pm
Congratulations on getting your own forum!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Durbs on May 11, 2011, 04:16:42 pm
Congrats on the new forum! You've earned it! Keep up the epic work!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kokojo on May 11, 2011, 04:35:36 pm
Quote from: Durbs on May 11, 2011, 04:16:42 pm
Congrats on the new forum! You've earned it! Keep up the epic work!


I was happy when I got mine, so you better be happy!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 11, 2011, 04:47:57 pm
/me is very proud and happy
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on May 12, 2011, 11:50:29 am
Wow, I am so disappointed I don't have time to try out all this new stuff.

I'm also sad that my custom map didn't work. I have gotten it to work in the actual game though, any idea why Tethical is having difficulties?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 12, 2011, 04:49:35 pm
I don't remember the error message but it was about tiles, and how they are enumerated. It is easy to fix by hand. Writting ourself the tiles info is the only way to add custom map, I did it for some of my map, so we can do it for yours too. But the exporter needs to get fixed to support those custom map. For now I lack time to fix it. :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Asmo X on May 14, 2011, 03:15:31 am
This is god damn amazing. Can't wait to see this up and running. Good work
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on May 14, 2011, 02:42:07 pm
Quote from: Asmo X on May 14, 2011, 03:15:31 am
This is god damn amazing. Can't wait to see this up and running. Good work

For once, Asmo, we agree completely.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Asmo X on May 15, 2011, 09:19:49 am
Who are you?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Dome on May 15, 2011, 09:23:05 am
Quote from: Asmo X on May 15, 2011, 09:19:49 am
Who are you?

Magitek
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 16, 2011, 03:09:27 am
I almost finished to rewrite the network layer. We'll see soon if the lag is fixed.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pride on May 16, 2011, 03:14:12 am
We can't wait! Keep up your great work ^_^
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 17, 2011, 08:20:33 am
I updated the changelog, but added no video because there is no visible changes.

I face some issues in hosting the new server: I need a Squeeze server, but a friend of me is going to lend me one.

@dear Cheetah, I finally managed to import your map:

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on May 17, 2011, 05:05:12 pm
Sweet, did you figure out what the problem was? Was it something Ganesha is doing incorrectly?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 18, 2011, 03:46:13 am
To be honest, I don't know how this issue has been fixed. I rewrote the server in python to fix the lag issue due to http, and during my tests I accidentaly loaded your map and saw that it worked.

The better news is that the lag is fixed. We tested it yesterday evening. The lag was really linked to the use of a synchronous protocol.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Eternal on May 18, 2011, 08:47:02 am
Excellent, glad to hear the lag's gone!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kokojo on May 18, 2011, 01:55:03 pm
Did you retest my map as well :P?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on May 18, 2011, 03:15:35 pm
Well as long as they are working that is what matters haha.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 19, 2011, 03:43:42 am
Quote from: Kokojo on May 18, 2011, 01:55:03 pm
Did you retest my map as well :P?


It looks like it is fixed too :)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Asmo X on May 21, 2011, 09:16:18 am
Awesome news. This project is moving super quick
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 21, 2011, 12:11:15 pm


I found a hacky way to display black and white fonts in panda. The next step is to display the characters HP, MP and CT.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Asmo X on May 21, 2011, 12:22:05 pm
That's really cool. How long does it take you to make a map like that?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 21, 2011, 12:30:11 pm
Quote from: Asmo X on May 21, 2011, 12:22:05 pm
That's really cool. How long does it take you to make a map like that?


Thanks!
It was something like
less than 1 day for the 3d model
about 2 days to apply the textures
about 2 hours to write the .json file for the server
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kagebunji on May 22, 2011, 12:09:49 pm
If you need any sprite help, PM me. I could either wrap up a concept or help you with some common ShiShi errors.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 23, 2011, 03:39:54 am
Thanks for your proposal Kage. I will post some help request in this forum. If you can help with one of these, It would be great :)

I finally understood how panda fonts work and made a font to display character's stats. I added the video on the first post.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on May 25, 2011, 04:13:54 pm
I've been so good calling Kivutar a hero up til now, so this post is just to reiterate that.

Kivutar is a hero.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Iscarot on May 27, 2011, 12:57:09 pm
Kivutar fantastic work and progress. I program games my self, was working on a RTS FFT set up, but got called to do a project for a company so had to set that on the backburner. Came back to the RTS project this week, was looking up FFT stats and attributes, and stumbled upon your progress. Have to say very impressed. As far as adding jobs , items, and spells in game ( as i have not looked at your code yet ), do you intend to set up a generic Obj to extend from, or will you be making an editor for that.  Just wondering, keep up the good work.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 27, 2011, 06:47:05 pm
@Kaffe: Thanks for your kind words. But you're exagerating. :mrgreen: Tethical is slowly becoming a community project, and would not be what it is today without the precious help of the other FFH members!

@Iscarot: This is great! I am very curious to see your code. Anyway, you are welcome in the project if you like it. There is a ton of work.

To answer your question, I don't know yet. The actual code base is a quick and dirty proof of concept. I would certainly give a try to the OOP way. It is cleaner than text files containing evaluated code.

I have the bad habit to code before thinking. It is ok for prototyping. But I already had to rewrite major parts of the game because of bad decisions. If teaming, we'd better have a plan, with a roadmap. We need somebody with project leading skills.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on May 31, 2011, 11:24:29 am
I coded some cursor improvements and added a new video on the first post.

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Eternal on June 01, 2011, 03:34:52 am
You guys should really be getting more attention for this. This is some amazing stuff and I bet people don't know about it. :(
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 01, 2011, 08:30:28 am
Give it its own sub forum for it Eternal, you know you wanna! =D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 01, 2011, 08:59:59 am
QuoteYou guys should really be getting more attention for this. This is some amazing stuff and I bet people don't know about it.

The project is still very young, having too much attention now may not be good :)

QuoteGive it its own sub forum for it Eternal, you know you wanna! =D

Aren't we already in our own subforum?

Good news, I fixed the network lag on huge maps. Now the lag depends only on the number of characters on the map, and no more on the number of tiles. But even this can be fixed later.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 01, 2011, 12:21:00 pm
I noticed something while grinding on the PSP.  Shadows are different shapes and sizes depending on the shape and incline of the terrain you're standing on, and whether or not you have float.  And there are shadows of trees at Sweegy Woods.  Same thing with the boulders at Mandalia.

Do you need donations?  Should we set up a donation drive?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 01, 2011, 01:20:40 pm
...I don't see how this costs money? O.o
I mean, sure, I suppose Kivutar could always use some more money, but normally when you're "donating", it's so the project can be finished, not so the creator can make some money.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on June 01, 2011, 01:54:02 pm
Programming takes a lot of time. Time = money. It is great that people want to support this project so much.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 01, 2011, 02:00:33 pm
If people want to donate their money - so kivuatar can buy more ram, or a proprietary software suite, or spend less time working a real job and more time coding for us (though our donations will probably not make this possible, unless he lives in a truck and eats only ramen noodles) - then how is it your business?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 01, 2011, 03:09:14 pm
My business? Well, you did post that on public forums....what you say is everybody's business. If you don't want it to be everybody else's business, then stop being dumb and PM kivutar instead. :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Dokurider on June 01, 2011, 03:42:18 pm
shutupandtakemymoney.jpg

Also I agreed to try to help out Kivu a little bit.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on June 01, 2011, 06:10:13 pm
I'm poor as hell, you guys must be loaded
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 01, 2011, 06:26:24 pm
Nah, I'm unemployed - again - but I'll donate 20 bucks if I can ever fucking keep a job.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 01, 2011, 07:11:02 pm
You are so cute :mrgreen:
I'm very touched.

But I don't need money. Really.
If you could give me time, I would say yes, because I need it. But we can't share time.

Your comments and all the data you've been able to gather about FFT are the best help I could ever hope.

Do you know if gomtuu is still alive?

Please no more money talk..
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 02, 2011, 05:50:49 pm
A lot of improvements today. I added a new video on the first post.

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 03, 2011, 07:07:24 pm
I uploaded a new video showing the new map chooser.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on June 03, 2011, 07:26:03 pm
It's amazing how much you are putting into this, I could see a stable release in the future, incredible.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pride on June 03, 2011, 07:38:53 pm
Holy hell that's amazing!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Aaron on June 05, 2011, 09:42:53 pm
Ive been stalking this thread,and watching so far Im loving this idea and can't wait till you get it finished =D Be nice to fight people Online and really test our skill's =o!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 09, 2011, 04:18:44 am
I uploaded a new video today. The two main improvements are the sprite exporter almost working, and the small jump animation.

Thank you all for your comments.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Durbs on June 09, 2011, 12:14:49 pm
It keeps going!!! Keep up the awesome work!!!
(http://flashlightnews.org/images2/Energizer_Bunny.jpg)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on June 09, 2011, 05:46:12 pm
I haven't been around to show support for a while, so this will just be a post indicating that my support exists. <3
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 17, 2011, 04:50:41 am
Thank you all.

Eternal showed me the Battle Mechanic Guide. Here are the new features:



The next step will be to remove all the copyrighted content and replace it with custom content. I'm counting on your help for this part.

My ideas so far:

- We must contrast with the original game by changing the universe. Steam punk or Cyber Punk would be a nice theme.
- 4 classes is enought for a sample game
- 4 maps too
- Some game mechanics that could change: skill tree instead of job tree, a point system for moves and actions

To accomplish this, we need those skills:
- balancing
- spriting
- blender mapping
- texture art
- portrait art
- composing (I plan to ask Noctaventures)
- font making (me)
- gui animations (me)
- dev (me)

Please apply in this thread and I will give you more details in separate thread.

The key role are the mapping and texture art.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on June 17, 2011, 01:32:01 pm
Wow you are breaking out the big guns today Kivutar. I will send you an email with some of my thoughts.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Desocupado on June 17, 2011, 05:10:16 pm
If you need some ideas to sketch out a cyberpunk class system I might give it a try.

Lets see... 3 (tock-paper-scissors) classes and a support one.

Sniper (direct shooter) > Assassin (melee) > Demoliton (indirect shooter) > Sniper
And a engineer/hacker-like (mage) for support skills.

The basic idea would be
Sniper move little and attack directly, but can dispatch Assasin with a shotgun attack, or pin it down with some rifle shots
Assassin moves too fast and often to be targeted by Demolition area damage
Demolition can heavily damage sniper with it's delayed blasts from c4, mines or even fire over obstacles with a grenade launcher
Engineer/Hacker/Medic could heal (repair) buff/debuff
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 17, 2011, 06:07:01 pm
I like the rock-paper-scissors + support idea.

I was thinking of something like that:
1) An Android knight class, for melee
2) An Esper class with psychic powers, for buffs & magick attacks
3) A Gangster class, mix of thief and gunslinger
4) A Chemist class, with potions, molotovs, adrenaline
The sprite for these would look good, don't you think?

But yeah, thinking the whole thing with a rock-paper-scissors relations smells good.

I made some experiments with glow filters in panda. The map looks too much like a Mako reactor, so we can't use it for the release. But the glow effect can be used somewhere else, even on sprites:

(http://tethical.kivutar.me/sites/default/files/Capture-Fen%C3%AAtre%20sans%20nom-1_3.png)

(http://tethical.kivutar.me/sites/default/files/Capture-Fen%C3%AAtre%20sans%20nom_3.png)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kagebunji on June 18, 2011, 08:19:03 am
Even sprites could glow? That is interesting. Do you have a screen shot at hand or something similiar?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: RandMuadDib on June 18, 2011, 03:02:11 pm
Great for ghosts and robots!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 18, 2011, 04:45:14 pm
Quote from: Kagebunji on June 18, 2011, 08:19:03 am
Even sprites could glow? That is interesting. Do you have a screen shot at hand or something similiar?


Here is the base sprite image, the glow map image, and the result in the engine.

(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=7754) + (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=7755) = (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=7756)

Quote from: RandMuadDib on June 18, 2011, 03:02:11 pm
Great for ghosts and robots!


Yes. I saw it the first time on this technical demo from panda3d:

(http://www.panda3d.org/manual/images/6/6b/Screenshot-Sample-Programs-Glow-Filter.jpg)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 21, 2011, 09:42:48 am
Baking shadows experiments:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kagebunji on June 21, 2011, 10:02:47 am
This is Warjilis map, right? Those shadows look really nice.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 21, 2011, 10:12:49 am
Quote from: Kagebunji on June 21, 2011, 10:02:47 am
This is Warjilis map, right? Those shadows look really nice.


This is a custom map made with blender. I reUVmapeed it, because Lijj is trying map texturing. The colored square are here to help him. I remapped it better than it was, and now baking shadows from Blender works well.

The first goal is to replace all the copyrighted content so we'll be out of copyright infrigement. The second goal is to provide a free sample game for newest users of the engine.

Also, this map is textured with 40x40px tiles instead of 20x20.
Lijj will also try double resolution sprites.
If more spriter wants to join the experiments, just apply in this topic. I will give support.

Here is an in game screenshot:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 21, 2011, 12:27:23 pm
Is the color limit on sprites higher in tethical? If so, I can see this glow effect getting spammed... which I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 21, 2011, 03:32:41 pm
That looks so much better with good shadowing.  Don't forget that the character shadows change and flow as they go through their "mark time" animation.  Have you looked into Scale2x?  It's a filter you can run sprites through, to make them look a little better sometimes.  2x resolution doesn't mean much if the sprites aren't improved.

Looking forward to those glowing sprites in our cyberpunk deep dungeon level.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 22, 2011, 08:55:53 am
Quote from: MysticKnightFF5 on June 21, 2011, 12:27:23 pm
Is the color limit on sprites higher in tethical? If so, I can see this glow effect getting spammed... which I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

Yes it is. What do you mean by spammed?

Quote from: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 21, 2011, 03:32:41 pm
That looks so much better with good shadowing.  Don't forget that the character shadows change and flow as they go through their "mark time" animation.  Have you looked into Scale2x?  It's a filter you can run sprites through, to make them look a little better sometimes.  2x resolution doesn't mean much if the sprites aren't improved.

Looking forward to those glowing sprites in our cyberpunk deep dungeon level.

What is the "mark time" animation?

I took a look at Scale2x. It would be interesting to implement it directly in the engine as an option to make the official sprites better.
But for now, the sprites of the demo are going to be directly drawn at double resolution, and I hope it will give a very nice result.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 22, 2011, 11:20:03 am
Spammed meaning "used every chance they get"
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 22, 2011, 11:28:56 am
I understand what you mean.

It reminds me when we used to play private Ragnarok servers. There was a ton of noobish servers made by people with absolutely no taste, full of winged custom sprites with absolutely no palette respect.

Like this:
(http://zero-ragnarok.site90.net/web_images/wings_collection.jpg)

It is not the role of an engine to add restrictions to prevent game-makers stupidity :)

So yes, if we success in making Tethical user friendly, there will be such servers. Please AVOID THEM :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 22, 2011, 11:53:00 am
course not, but I foresee jedi and sith, lots of 'em
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: RandMuadDib on June 22, 2011, 02:37:47 pm
well as long as the entire server is starwars theme, i don't see a problem with that :D
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 22, 2011, 03:26:03 pm
Wow, with the help of Panda3d community, I fixed an awfull bug causing people to join parties already full instead of the party they clicked on.

I reported the bug here. https://bugs.launchpad.net/panda3d/+bug/800861

Two days of work lost on this bug :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on June 22, 2011, 04:05:21 pm
You da man
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 22, 2011, 06:47:21 pm
I quiver with disgust at such sprites..
When people have unlimited colors it seems like they tend to pick the worst possible ones.
Texture venturing begins now almost (4pm for me).. limited colors will save us!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on June 22, 2011, 07:59:03 pm
I think a majority of the art direction of FFT (released in 1998) was dictated by space requirements, almost requiring the space-saving technique of assigning a palette (as opposed to storing each pixel as an individual color) and probably influenced in no small part by the fact that Quest's staff (the people that developed Tactics Ogre, released in 1995, and the people who got brought on by Square for this title) had recently finished working with a very similar set of restrictions for a game on a 16-bit system (namely, the SNES). In other words, at least in the case of the SNES game, they made the best use of what space (and ability to address said space) they could. Anyone who's looked at a sprite sheet in terms of size knows none of FFT's original sprites are small (when taken as a whole), but each individual frame is tiny by today's standards. Inasmuch, if you choose not to innovate at all and re-use the same stringent restrictions that Quest originally developed, no big deal, but I bet you would want to use more colors (appropriately) to address the needs of a sprite with larger frames than FFT's sprite sheet as a matter of artistic course (which has nothing to do implicitly with color restrictions and everything to do with color choice and perception).
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on June 22, 2011, 08:33:14 pm
Kivutar, what exactly do you need in terms of art? I'm not the best but I Can try and whip something up
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 22, 2011, 11:34:35 pm
Lijj's progress so far (lunch hour):

I think 16 color sprites are ok for this but 20-21 would be pretty sweet; both could work
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on June 22, 2011, 11:35:27 pm
holy shit lijj!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 23, 2011, 12:20:49 am
Oh, what I meant was SELF limited colors will save us..
For what I got so far I have a lot of shared colors and I'm trying to keep it minimal as I go...
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on June 23, 2011, 12:35:25 am
Ahem..I shall take a more accomodating tone....

Looks Freakin' epic Lijj! Sexy map.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 23, 2011, 12:37:56 am
Thanks a lot.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on June 23, 2011, 12:49:02 am
As an example, my point is just that no where on earth will you find a desaturated shade of blue in grass. It's a perceptual thing resorted to because of lack of ability to use colors all the colors that shade interpolates. No matter how much I look at it, I can't think "someone else made that". Instead, I think "Secret of Mana 3" (whether that's the style or not). With more space (scaling up from, say, 16x16 to 64x64 or 128x128) you can appropriately fit in more colors and get away from what came before (because it's an out-dated approach that ignores 10 years worth of advancement). On that note, I wonder what Square-Enix's approach to creating a sequal on a current generation console would be? Would they capitalize on the opportunity to improve or feed us more of the same?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 23, 2011, 03:24:31 am
@lirmont, your thought on the colors are very interesting.
Like I said before, and Lijj expressed it better than me, no restrictions will be added for the engine, we are self limitating our palette for this demo game.
I am very curious to see what would be a t-rpg with todays technologies.

QuoteI can't think "someone else made that". Instead, I think "Secret of Mana 3"

Bad for others, but very good for Secret of Mana 3, they used these limitations to create something positive, their own style.

QuoteKivutar, what exactly do you need in terms of art? I'm not the best but I Can try and whip something up

Thanks a lot for your help proposal. I don't know exactly what we are doing. The appropriate term would be victorian steam punk, of victorian retro future, LOL.
In fact, it is a little bit early to grow the team, and Lijj is in charge of this side project that aims to replace copyrighted content. Please ask Lijj directly if he needs help, I let him decide how he likes to work.

Ok, now it is my turn :D
Yesterday I patched the engine, we now have an unlimited number of teams per battle:



[EDIT] I forgot to contratulate Lijj on this topic because he show me his work using the chan, but again, GG Lijj, this is an awesome result. And we are at the beginning. I can't imagine what you will be producing when you well get used to these technologies!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 23, 2011, 06:36:34 am
Thank you Kivutar.
I must say it's an honor to work on this excellent project. I can only imagine it will be a popular game.
I will post more  tomorrow and  I should be starting the two buildings and finishing the other textures.
I don't know what I would have you do right now General Strife.. I've just got to get some sleep for now.

a little more (top textures aren't done and I realize part of it should change):
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/8862/prev2y.png

Update:
(http://lijj.ffhacktics.com/map1-006.png)
I thought maybe some glow effect would be kind of nice along with a little yellow highlight around them in the actual texture but that would be the last step.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 23, 2011, 02:10:59 pm
Mark time is military speak for marching in place - how a character goes through a slower walking animation when standing still.

Take a look at Jeanne D'Arc sometime.  They use 3D character models (with skeletons and thingies and whatnot) and environments, like Vagrant Story.  It's a beautiful game, despite everything being so small on the screen.

SaGa Frontier 2 has great effect animations, especially for a PSOne game.  Life Water is what I'm thinking of, along with the LP->HP restore animation.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 25, 2011, 06:05:14 am
Latest update. I'm hoping to get some sort of ambient glow effect for the windows. And the yellow and black things are what I hope to be able to make incandescent lights with.
(http://lijj.ffhacktics.com/mp006pr.png)

Oh yeah; I'd like to get some cast iron fencing in there too, just in one part on the end of the map.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 25, 2011, 10:02:39 am
Oh god yes!! Somebody make a map for a 32 way!

NOTE: I think if you're going to allow unlimited teams, you should have an int stored in each map so Tethical can draw from it and only allow that many participants, so no nasty glitches happen.
As for Observers, I highly recocomend including a ban feature if you're going to include observers. There's an unlimited amount of uses for a ban feature.
I believe such a feature should be given to the host of the room or every player in the match.  :ban: :ban: :ban: :ban:
EDIT: Also, beautiful map lijj.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: RandMuadDib on June 25, 2011, 11:36:22 am
Map is gorgeous!!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on June 25, 2011, 01:31:53 pm
I'm happy to see the progress here. Yum-yum!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on June 25, 2011, 01:50:48 pm
Lijj are these all custom textures from yourself? This is a very impressive looking map.

Awesome to have multiple players on a map.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 25, 2011, 03:46:16 pm
I know... I can't wait for online 3 and 4somes!   
Yes I made them all custom. I referenced FFVI for the rocks but made my own original tile based on it (with out copy pasting) so no copyright infringement. ;) I also referenced some original Tactics textures but only for for orientation ideas etc.
Everything else I made completely from my imagination and used my own intuition for the palette which ended up being a little bigger than I planned(it's 45 color).
Thanks Cheetah also.. It is a lot of work but the more I make the easier it'll get with experience and a bigger custom texture library as I go; I've been saving all of them in a separate file.
Here's the palette:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: TheChad on June 26, 2011, 02:30:07 am
I've been lurking on this project for a while now but I just want to throw out some support for this - this looks incredible!

Kivutar - the fact you are actually making this thing blows my mind!  Keep up the good work!

Lirimont - some of your maps look amazing!

Lijj - the textures you're doing on this map are simply wonderful.

I think it's great that there are so many talented people working together to support this project - that's really where this community shines.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 26, 2011, 04:38:54 am
Thanks you all :mrgreen:

Lijj, your texture is very good.

I have not posted on the forum for a while because I am at the French Perl Workshop.

I made some experiments on point lights, but I am not satisfied with this yet.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on June 26, 2011, 12:10:09 pm
It is certainly heading in the correct direction though Kivutar, looking good.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 26, 2011, 05:25:18 pm
Yes! That looks almost exactly how I was hoping it could; can't wait to see what you come up with when you actually like the result combined with the textures. That black mage looks really cool illuminated.
I did pm you a couple things Kivutar, but enjoy the workshop for now.
We'll talk about a better way to share files soon.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 26, 2011, 06:02:55 pm
Here is the result with the texture.

The result is nice, but not perfect yet. The backed shadows are now false, I must regenerate them with the new lights.

Also, I could start to implement map arrangements so we can have different lighting and textures for day and night.

I can show you how to update and launch tethical so you can alse experiment with background colors, and lighting.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 27, 2011, 06:17:10 pm
Is Tethical mature enough for me to advertise it at RHDN and the various Linux forums?  Or do you want me to wait until you have a finished project before any possiblity of forking?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 27, 2011, 07:09:03 pm
I'd suggest presenting it as a finished project rather than an alpha. Because, it is still an alpha. >.>
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 27, 2011, 07:38:35 pm
Yeah, that's what I thought.  Keep it under wraps until all copyrighted content is removed.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on June 27, 2011, 10:10:20 pm
Quote from: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 27, 2011, 07:38:35 pm
Yeah, that's what I thought.  Keep it under wraps until all copyrighted content is removed.

Rather not put Kiv in jail XD
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 28, 2011, 04:59:28 am
Yeah xD
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 28, 2011, 04:38:56 pm
No, we wouldn't want that :shock:
Well I thought I'd post here again... (should I make a separate topic, or is this fine?)
I thought of instead of recoloring with the 3d program the textures would benefit from a direct palette edit more to change the lighting of time of day/night (I'll call it mood from now on).
Also, I thought using two glow effects on the incandescent lights would look good; one bigger yellow and one smaller white on top of that.  I havent added the light fixtures and bulbs yet because I want to see the actual glow effect's result 1st. and I think I can do the the shadows quite easily on my own.. in this example I've only added light but subtle shadows would be very easy to do:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 28, 2011, 04:41:14 pm
oh yeah, also I forgot to mention the glow around the windows.. I could probably do that directly on the texture unless it looks good using the 3d program's glow.. a hopefully ambient pale orange color for that.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 29, 2011, 12:27:03 pm
Baked shadows and lights are good for performance, but dynamic lighting allow us to light the sprites.

I still don't get how to draw the lights, maybe with a shader. I also tried to draw the shadows programmaticaly with no result.

Anyway, in the first pic you can see the result with the glow map + removed the backed shadows.

The second one is just for fun. I got this result by chance when drawing lights frustrums.

We should find somene who knows panda or shaders better than I.

@Lirmont, do you know how it works?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on June 29, 2011, 12:29:42 pm
Picture two is what would happen if FFT and Assassins Creed had a child.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on June 29, 2011, 01:35:32 pm
Between all the lurking, I'll just say that I like the progress. ^____^
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: RandMuadDib on June 29, 2011, 03:51:26 pm
Quote from: Cheetah on June 29, 2011, 12:29:42 pm
Picture two is what would happen if FFT and Assassins Creed had a child.

That would be amazing
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on June 29, 2011, 04:08:06 pm
I don't know how Panda3D does shadows, but here's a forum post showing something similar to what I think you want to see: http://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5442

Something to keep in mind if you're not very familiar with OpenGL, almost all of OpenGL's techniques require drawing the scene (your geometry) more than once (i.e. "passes"). If you say you tried drawing shadows with no result, did you switch to a different drawing buffer first? Did you save the result from the buffer you wanted (say, the depth buffer in an offscreen drawing buffer)? Finally, did you project that information back over the scene in the buffer that you'd display the actual scene in? Those are all considerations that Panda3D is probably considering for you, but you likely still have to tell Panda3D "This doesn't go on the screen yet!" (offscreen buffer) and "I want to keep this!" (a texture image for what you got out of the offscreen buffer; the "shadow map" per that forum post).

Also, I don't quite understand what you're trying to do with the lights that is making you think "I still don't get how to draw the lights", but, if I had to take a stab at it, are you saying you want the point lights to project onto the ground? That (to the best of my knowledge) requires 2+ lights per spot. The one light is the one you already have that makes the spot around the areas on the map (the light fixtures). You'd have to spend another light that looks from the original point light's "look at" vector (3d coordinate) to a new "look at" vector perpendicular (rotated 90 degrees) on whatever axis you want. You can set different parameters for the second light so that it spreads out wider and maybe diffuses more than what the original spot light does.

Or, rewrite the original light to start from behind the position and shoot through it.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 29, 2011, 04:59:55 pm
Thanks for your detailed reply.

I would like to draw shadows like on the attachement dynamically.

As the map is one model, I have to enable self shadowing. The map have to project shadows on itself.

I found a sample panda script that demonstrate how to achieve this : http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~panda3d/panda3d/samples/view/head:/samples/Shadows/Tut-Shadow-Mapping-Advanced.py

I'm reading it at the moment.

But it looks like that combining the real cg shaders with the shader generator of panda (the abstraction that allows me to have a glow filter without writting cg) is hard.

[EDIT] for now I got the screenshot on the second pic. They used a strange camera instead of the light :/
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on June 29, 2011, 05:15:24 pm
Just think of the camera as a way to look at what the light would "see". I didn't follow the link, because I don't know python enough to read it well, but they probably changed the culling (to remove the faces of the map that face the camera) and forced the scene that camera was in to draw to a buffer you can use for shadows (what the camera could see). Then it puts it back over the original scene (without removing front-facing geometry).
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 29, 2011, 05:27:42 pm
How will you implement weather effects, like lightning strikes, rain, snow, and fog?  How about weather that changes the battlefield (icicles, frozen water, snow on ground)?  Or can this wait?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 29, 2011, 07:44:59 pm
I just hope the shadows aren't going to be too strong .. no need for that at night anyway.. That orange glow around the windows is the right color but could the radiance be lessened to about half or less of what it is now? See the mockup I posted and how feint it is?
@ PGF: I think we can do that kind of thing .. at least fog or mist would be easy enough using a transparent custom texture.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on June 29, 2011, 07:57:01 pm
What about the windmill shed?  Animation, I mean.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on June 29, 2011, 07:58:45 pm
I was going to ask about implementing gifs into the maps, but ..I don't know enough about the 3d dept. to answer that for a big moving piece.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on June 30, 2011, 03:51:08 am
@lirmont, thanks for the explanation. I'm going to try to replace this spotlight with a directionnal light for now.

@PGF:
lightning srike: flashing the sky + sound.
rain & snow: panda3d has a particle framework that supports sprites
fog: there is a fog effect in panda, but I think it is now exaclty what we want, so we'll have to think of a new one. Or oa combination of the two.


@Lijj: These shadows would be a nice feature for tethical, but we don't have to use it in our sample game.
We have no control over the glow, it just glows the color of the texture underneath. And yes, we can adjust the radiance, there is 3 levels: small, medium and large. We should switch to medium then.
I can show you how to launch the game so you can see the result of your work + lights + effects.

Another reason to not bake night into the map textures is that using lights allows us to light the sprites as well as the map.

@About animations: panda3d is supposed to support it. So I have to experiment with that too.
Gif is not supported. But texture animations are, so I should experiment with that too.


Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 07, 2011, 11:18:40 am
I added the support for textures for tiles of the walkable or attackable zone.
So we can draw them like we want without having to touch the source code.

I also upgraded the cursor and the shadow to 40x40px to fit the doubled resolution of our new textures.

You can see the unfinished sprite by Lijj.
I temporary put the map into daylight to let you see the changes.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kagebunji on July 07, 2011, 11:37:09 am
That's beautifull. Looks really nice. But on some frames, here eyes are off(this happens in FFT as well, is it the game causing it?). But to use such sprites, EVERY sprite need to be redone, at least sprites for jobs are a must I guess. I assume water animations aren't done yet, cause the Knight in water is like cut in half.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on July 07, 2011, 12:55:46 pm
This is really incredible looking, I am very impressed guys you should all be very proud of just producing this level of product.

I'm realizing that with upscaling the textures and sprites, that you are also likely going to need to up the amount of polygons as well. The environments are going to look way too blocky now. Your new map has some more detailed elements which helps. Such has having a minimum of half blocks maybe go to quarter blocks. Am I making any sense?

The shadows of the far three knights are looking odd.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 07, 2011, 02:23:03 pm
QuoteBut on some frames, here eyes are off(this happens in FFT as well, is it the game causing it?).

This happens on FFT only if you use an emulator with a resolution different than 320x240. In Tethical, the issue is similar, I don't know yet how to solve it :/

QuoteBut to use such sprites, EVERY sprite need to be redone, at least sprites for jobs are a must I guess.

These are the sprites for our sample game/tech demo. We still are able to run the classic sprites. In fact, you choose the resolution you need at the time you design your game.
We do not plan to port the official sprites to double resolution. Our first goal is to get rid of the copyrighted content to distribute the engine.

QuoteI assume water animations aren't done yet, cause the Knight in water is like cut in half.

Water animation is not done yet, I don't know how to handle it. Panda is able to loop over textures, but our textures are 1024x1024 and providing 4 textures like this may cause performance issues.
The characters cut in half have nothing to do with the water animation, we just need to add sprites frames for water.

QuoteThis is really incredible looking, I am very impressed guys you should all be very proud of just producing this level of product.

Thanks to Lijj! I like the result too.

QuoteI'm realizing that with upscaling the textures and sprites, that you are also likely going to need to up the amount of polygons as well. The environments are going to look way too blocky now. Your new map has some more detailed elements which helps. Such has having a minimum of half blocks maybe go to quarter blocks. Am I making any sense?

I have to agree. It's not going to be easy. The new map I did is a little too big...
I may finish it fast and start a small but very well designed map with more polygons.

QuoteThe shadows of the far three knights are looking odd.

Yes, this is a bug :( I will ask the panda3d community about this.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on July 07, 2011, 02:30:57 pm
Thanks a lot you two.
Yes I agree about the less angular maps from now on to match the resolution Cheetah. This one works fortunately, but the next ones should definitely be smoother. I'm so glad that the walking animation wasn't in dire need of more frames to make up for their mass, they've already taken a lot of work (phweew).
I wonder what it is with the eye.. well fix it or find the native resolution.
I like the new map cursor Kivutar. I wonder if we should make it a different tone of blue or violet just to further stray from FFT's.
Hopefully we can smash that shadow bug too.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 11, 2011, 08:21:52 am
The new paletted sprites by Lijj. I updated the engine to handle a color per team for sprites.

You can see the shadow bug has disapeared, it is not fixed yet, I just tried another video card. So it realy is a bug in Panda3D. I'm going to report it.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on July 11, 2011, 03:36:41 pm
(http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14916461/images/1305319201227.jpg)
:more:
I've been noticing a severe lack of posting! THIS TRAGEDY MUST BE RECTIFIED!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 11, 2011, 04:44:50 pm
I'm so sorry T_T
I had a lot of work recently. And it's not going to change soon because I am on holidays next august and will not have access to the net.
But we are still working on Tethical.
You can check our commits on the github page here https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/commits/master if I don't post as often as you would like.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on July 12, 2011, 09:41:51 am
So I feel like there is something funny going on with the shadows. Where is that shadow in front of the building on the right coming from?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on July 12, 2011, 01:22:24 pm
Why is the right eye messed up on them fem knights?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on July 12, 2011, 08:03:58 pm
Only because of the current resolution currently General Strife.
In that screenshot the resolution is squashed down so it distorts the pixels. I found that when you make the window bigger in Tethical it corrects itself.
As long as the pixels are at least their native size or larger it's fine but when compressed in any way it'll distort.

I could have posted more updates I guess of my sprite work but who would care to see that. I want to start a new thread for spriting later today when I finish up some touch ups.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on July 12, 2011, 08:08:47 pm
good question also Cheetah I don't get that shadow.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 13, 2011, 05:31:49 pm
I am actualy into resolution experiments.

Here is a small roadmap:
- make the GUI and fonts look perfect at 256x240
- make official sprites look perfect at 256x240
- double the resolution of all
- find the best way to adapt the resolution to window size changes

For now, I have a pretty good result for GUI and fonts at 256x256. I don't understand yet why all is messed up if I dont use an x = y = 2^n resolution.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 14, 2011, 05:25:40 pm
Ok, I understand better how resolution works.
I fixed all the resolution issues except the sprites.

Before:
(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=8110;image)(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=8111;image)(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=8112;image)
After:
(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=8113;image)(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=8114;image)(http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=6809.0;attach=8115;image)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 15, 2011, 06:04:45 pm
A big patch: first steps of previewing damage.

Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 17, 2011, 07:55:23 am


Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on July 17, 2011, 12:33:45 pm
Is that smoke from the chimney a normal effect in FFT? It looks great plus snow, is that new as well? Great work as always Kivutar! I'm looking forward to seeing damage numbers haha.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Atma on July 18, 2011, 12:08:44 am
haven't checked this in a while, but i love the recent progress!
i was wondering... is this mainly meant as a multiplayer engine, or will there be a way to create a storyline for single player modes?  and if so, how will we be able to compile it, would there be any tool/programs like we have for FFT? (fftpatcher for example)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 18, 2011, 03:31:19 am
QuoteIs that smoke from the chimney a normal effect in FFT? It looks great plus snow, is that new as well? Great work as always Kivutar! I'm looking forward to seeing damage numbers haha.

No, It is not from FFT. Just an experiment. Same for the snow.

To add damage numbers, I have to improve my fonts. And the small tool I use to compile fonts segfaults on my x86_64 arch linux. I have to talk with the developpers of Panda to fix that.

Quotehaven't checked this in a while, but i love the recent progress!
i was wondering... is this mainly meant as a multiplayer engine, or will there be a way to create a storyline for single player modes?  and if so, how will we be able to compile it, would there be any tool/programs like we have for FFT? (fftpatcher for example)

Hi Atma, thanks for your love ;)
Our short term goal is to provide online battles. But once it is done (there is still a ton of work) it will be easy to add a storyline mode.
The bad news is that even with help, it could take us years to achieve a complete game with spells, shops, AI, items, monsters, events, etc...
I don't know how long it will be interesting for me to code Tethical. It may be the time to build a small team of 2~3 developers.
Concerning game compilation, for now, there is a bunch of json files to edit, and a command line tool to pack the game. Creating GUI to edit files is easy.
Of course, people able to edit the source code (it is written in Python, an easy to read script language) will be able to change more things. Like it is the case today for ASM hackers, but faster.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 18, 2011, 10:08:17 am
The new sprites looking good with the resolution fix. No more strange eyes.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on July 18, 2011, 10:13:52 am
Wow! pixel perfect...
new floor tile?
I should have mentioned earlier the way the snow turns with the camera is great.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on July 18, 2011, 04:32:27 pm
 :shock: This is amazing!!!I want to help. Mind you I am JUST starting python aweek ago. But this is perfect. And we can look for more people to help on Indie DB for other things too. This game has massive potential you have no idea. If you wanna do chat i always have my skype on nickname is boomstick8 . I am more than eager to learn python on my own and keep up.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 19, 2011, 03:31:31 am
Quotenew floor tile?

You mean the blue cursor?

Quote from: Omegus on July 18, 2011, 04:32:27 pm
:shock: This is amazing!!!I want to help. Mind you I am JUST starting python aweek ago. But this is perfect. And we can look for more people to help on Indie DB for other things too. This game has massive potential you have no idea. If you wanna do chat i always have my skype on nickname is boomstick8 . I am more than eager to learn python on my own and keep up.

Do you know other languages, or is python you first language?
I add you on skype, but please join us on IRC too.
And do you know how to use Git?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kaffe on July 21, 2011, 12:10:07 am
Is there a Tethical IRC channel or are you talking about FFH IRC channel?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 24, 2011, 04:48:00 pm
I was talking about FFH IRC channel.

Good news: Calvin Chen is joining the development forces. He's the guy who did this: http://strayobjects.blogspot.com/p/tactics.html
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on July 26, 2011, 12:09:27 pm
Update (26 july)
I have been looking over the code and looks good so far. I wanted to run by you a line of code to add on to damage that when a attack is landed that exp is given that character. but i think we should talk with Calvin also and figure how you want the exp and level should go forth. because I have some (alot) of ideas how we could do it.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: GeneralStrife on July 26, 2011, 01:42:56 pm
holy shit if your characters leveled up fighting other people that would be an awesome system
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on July 26, 2011, 01:52:34 pm
Quote from: Omegus on July 26, 2011, 12:09:27 pm
Update (26 july)
I have been looking over the code and looks good so far. I wanted to run by you a line of code to add on to damage that when a attack is landed that exp is given that character. but i think we should talk with Calvin also and figure how you want the exp and level should go forth. because I have some (alot) of ideas how we could do it.

Yeah, how ready are you for battle mechanics?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 26, 2011, 04:27:07 pm
I did a lot of code refactoring today, mostly around the fonts management.

@Omegus: the plan is to follow FFT mechanics for the beggining, and if it works, add abstraction layers in a second time.
You can find a lot of information on how xp is computed on this guide: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876 (http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3876)
This is our reference.

There is already some code about xp in the Character.py file server side: the formulas for stats increase. So all we have to add is the leveling feature, adding an extra data to the attack packet, so the client can display gained xp.

Omegus, do you know how to use git and github?

Today I discussed with calvin how to implement AI. I tell him to continue this talk on this public forum on my next mail.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on July 26, 2011, 05:08:16 pm
i know how to use github. ok cool i cant wait.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on July 26, 2011, 06:08:57 pm
Can you make some rough estimates on the minimum hardware requirements to run Tethical?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: RandMuadDib on July 26, 2011, 08:05:23 pm
as far as abilities go (you might not be this far yet i dunno) are you planning on

1) having several damage formulas with input parameters so multiple abilities can use the same formula (like FFT does)

or

2) having the damage formula built into each ability so each can be precisely customized exactly as the designer requires?

or

3) some frankencombination of both?

or

4) some other method i haven't thought of?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 27, 2011, 05:36:12 am
Quote from: Omegus on July 26, 2011, 05:08:16 pm
i know how to use github. ok cool i cant wait.

Great!! Don't wait then, as long as you stick to the battle mechanics guide, your code won't be a loss of time. Fork tethical on github, and let's test the merge request thing. I never used this workflow, I'm very curious to see how it works :D

Quote from: Pickle Girl Fanboy on July 26, 2011, 06:08:57 pm
Can you make some rough estimates on the minimum hardware requirements to run Tethical?

I was able to run tethical on a virtualized windows7 with only 1go ram and 16mo for the video card, without 2d or 3d acceleration activated! It was slow but not unplayable.

Quote from: RandMuadDib on July 26, 2011, 08:05:23 pm
as far as abilities go (you might not be this far yet i dunno) are you planning on

1) having several damage formulas with input parameters so multiple abilities can use the same formula (like FFT does)

or

2) having the damage formula built into each ability so each can be precisely customized exactly as the designer requires?

or

3) some frankencombination of both?

or

4) some other method i haven't thought of?

I don't understand what is limitative in method 1. If you want to change the formula of a skill without changing the formula of others, just duplicate that formula and link the skill to this new formula, then mod the formula. Maybe it is hard in ASM to do such a thing, I don't know.
Anyway, in Tethical, it will be easy to duplicate a formula: you'll just have to copy/paste a file or a block of text. And configuring what formula is used by a skill will be changing a name in a config file.
Shared formulas should not be seen as a limitation, it is a feature that let's you change many things by editing a single value ;)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on July 27, 2011, 06:58:19 pm
The following is a PM I sent another member who was going to work on a single-player fork of tethical before he got sidetracked by real life.

QuoteDon't worry about this right now, but once you can replicate vanilla's stat/equipment/ability systems, can you break tethical into modules, so someone can substitute different stat/equipment/ability systems for the FFT systems?
Specifically:
*A Vagrant Story Stat/Equipment system.
*An Ogre Battle S/E/A system.
*A SaGa Frontier S/E/A system.
*A FF7 Materia-like Ability system.

Once you are 100% done with your spin-off of tethical, I mean.  I'd like this because you could use these modules for other games, like a FF6 or SaGa Frontier type game.  And you'd need at least three modules: a world map module, a battle/event module, a menu module, a data module (sprites and game data like formulas and stats), and a S/E/A system module.

Sorry if I sound like an ass or a newb.  You shouldn't worry about modules for a long time; just hardcoding everything will be fine until your third or fourth alpha bugfix is stable.  This is an idea for when you want to make it into something more.


And have you started on displaying text boxes during battle, with and without portraits?  Or will you wait until later before starting on battle events?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on July 27, 2011, 07:16:57 pm
Quote from: Kivutar on July 27, 2011, 05:36:12 am
Great!! Don't wait then, as long as you stick to the battle mechanics guide, your code won't be a loss of time. Fork tethical on github, and let's test the merge request thing. I never used this workflow, I'm very curious to see how it works :D


I forked with the git rep. now do you want me to "copy , paste "  the formula from the web page sort of speak? or do you want me to memorize it to sort through what you have done so far?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on July 28, 2011, 03:12:24 am
Quote from: Omegus on July 27, 2011, 07:16:57 pm
I forked with the git rep. now do you want me to "copy , paste "  the formula from the web page sort of speak? or do you want me to memorize it to sort through what you have done so far?

I'm not certain to understand the question (English is not my native language). Using the official formula is right for the beginning because it helps us to test the result. It can be hardcoded. Having characters leveling up is already a good thing, even if the formulas are hardcoded. Then in a second time we can talk, you me and Calvin on how to implement modularity.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on August 16, 2011, 08:13:53 am
I'm back from holidays. Working on a big patch: the team formation interface.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Cheetah on August 16, 2011, 10:10:20 am
Great to see you back Kivutar! Maybe this will help you out, sorry that I couldn't quickly delete the shadow.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on August 16, 2011, 05:16:18 pm
Welcome back, Kivutar!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on August 20, 2011, 08:02:03 am
Thank you all. Here's is the summer changelog. Sorry for now having posted updates for a while. The developement is going on, but I lack time to communicate.



Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Lijj on August 24, 2011, 09:23:59 pm
I'm so exited for all of this, particularly the palettes.
Before I go away (for two lousey months) I will get you paletted sets of the final version.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: MysticKnightFF5 on August 24, 2011, 11:13:37 pm
Maybe work on creating custom win conditions??
That would be really fun if we could set up a whole RP around this.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Pickle Girl Fanboy on August 25, 2011, 01:07:03 pm
This really should wait until after 1.0, but nevertheless:

Implement features from PSP wireless play?
* Invisible characters are actually invisible to enemies.
* Time limit to input commands option, defaults to wait or AI = (n) seconds/minutes per turn to input command, does excess time rollover?  how about a total of (n) minutes to input all commands, and once you run out, every action then defaults to AI?
* Action limit option = (n) actions per side per battle.
* Clocktick limit option = battle is over after (n) clockticks.
* Traps.  Optional.  Also, trap placement.  Option to randomize type of trap.  Option to randomize trap placement.  Dialog upon trap trigger should be "It's a trap!"
* Option to quit mid-battle.  Option to disable quitting mid-battle.  Option to penalize the quitter on quit.
* Choose post-battle spoils.
* Press a key just before Attack (as in Attack command) to add knockback.  Optional.
* Lock weapons if hit% is close to 50%.  Add lock weapons dialog and key presses.  Optional.
* Trap disarm dialog.  Can be either rapid key presses, quick "evade" key press to reward quick thinking, or an "enter code" dialog to reward cool-headedness.  Optional.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on August 26, 2011, 04:49:21 am
@Cheetah: Thanks for the images, I don't know if I will use them or code the thing using a different approach, but thanks anyway.

@Pickle Girl Fanboy
This is a usefull list.
They will be implemented in the future.

I started to use github token system: https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/issues?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open (https://github.com/Kivutar/tethical/issues?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open)
This can be used for bug reports and feature requests. If you use it, please make sure to submit atomic tokens.
I think it is a good beginning for teamwork.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on December 11, 2011, 12:21:32 pm
Hello all from sunny Kandahar. You guys have really progressed since I left. How is everyone ill be home in a couple of weeks (hopefully in time for Christmas). I'll talk you all soon.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on December 12, 2011, 03:33:54 am
Omegus, I'm happy to have news from you. Come back soon.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: wemustexpandordie on January 02, 2012, 01:09:34 pm
Hi

I do acknowledge the fact that you aren't making much more than a demo for the fact that it this is a lot of work.

However on another part of the forums I made a list of ideas much of which isn't possible unless you start from scratch.

Again I acknowledge that you're not trying to take in more work than you can, but Dome gave me a link to this page.
I guess he wants me to show you.

After all maybe you'll get quite a bit of help and you did say you'd make it as open source as possible.

so here's the link to my post.

http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8259.0
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kivutar on January 03, 2012, 09:35:04 am
Thank you. Some of your ideas are in the scope of tethical, some are not, but it is always good for us to ear about what people want.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: zephyros on January 27, 2012, 04:14:28 pm
I have one question. Is the entire engine going to run with Python, or is Python just used for the map tool inside C++?
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on January 28, 2012, 08:37:32 am
The engine runs in Python. Tethical (the engine) runs inside of another engine (Panda3d). The version of Panda3d Tethical uses is the Python binding.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: zephyros on January 29, 2012, 04:02:27 am
Okay gotcha. Thanks for the response lirmont. I had read that some games could use python tools but the main engine could be written in another code type, so I wasn't sure.  :o

I'll be watching the progress of Tethical as it expands. Great work so far!
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Zand3 on February 13, 2012, 07:30:30 pm
Hi guys, I'm a complete noob to this site and I don't know anything about programming, but I've always wanted to play FFT online ever since I was a kid. The first time I got Xlink Kai to work was magical and enthralling. Unfortunately it was not worth the effort just to find one person to play with, but the dream lives on! I was hoping to find a forum section for xlink kai players on this site, but doesn't look that way. It would be cool to build a community like that, or if this project turns into something like that, that would be amazing too of course. Anyways, just wanted to reach out and speak my thoughts and see what people are thinking out there. Best wishes.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on August 12, 2012, 10:27:38 pm
Hey everyone, Guess who just became a qualified s.n.i.p.e.r.... Anyways just jumped on the old inter-hyper-web to check on the progress of the engine and I must say it looks great.Really you guys have done a ridiculous amount of work since I left last year for my tour. I also wanted to ask if any one here also knew about this project going on right now on kickstarter. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shoreboundstudios/shadow-remnants (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shoreboundstudios/shadow-remnants) . The idea is the same as yours. But it looks like they are going to release near september 2013 from what I have seen on the page.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on August 13, 2012, 09:30:08 pm
Congratulations on your sniper certification, man! Also, thanks for touring. I had not heard of that project before your post, but I do market research time-to-time and there are several such ventures. For instance, there's a full TRPG with a crafting component for android phones that's been out for years at this point (believe the price was $19.99 when I saw it in google's marketplace). However, the difference between those products and the aims of Tethical are somewhat fundamental. Each support feature brings Tethical's engine to be more and more like a development platform for TRPG games. If any of those games had to suddenly be different, could they? Probably not without a lot of work, because one-off games aren't built that way. I've seen a lot of my work come together recently (speaking of my sprite animation tool) and formulas will come together soon to be used in-game (I'm working on the testing component for them now). I've already begun reorganizing Tethical's code base to support events (you can see one of a song from an opera), and other things are in the works from me. Thanks for your continued interest in the project.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Omegus on August 13, 2012, 09:57:44 pm
Hey just saw the opera event video, great work. Great to hear things are really coming together for you guys and gals on the team. I hope to be the first to try out the engine when it is finished.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Sajátgép on November 14, 2012, 04:19:43 pm
Hey there, this project looks awesome, did read the forum awhile now.

As everyone feels when seeing something good, as do I feel the need to give some help.

I'm learning computer engineering, and know some c,c++,java, but don't have a clue on python(sadly).

But I ask, if I can do something to help, maybe easy but time consuming things, or things that need hard logic thinking, feel free to tell me.(I even could start learning python at an average speed.)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on November 14, 2012, 05:37:29 pm
Thanks for your interest and kind offer to help, but, from one programmer to another, it's a bad idea for a beginner to learn Python in the face of learning C/C++/Java. Python's approach, while programmatically similar, is radically different to type-safe approaches to variables you face in C++/Java. Further than that, I did not know Python when I began helping with this project, and so reading my code may likely earn you some bad habits.

Beyond that, things that require complex logic are few and far between at this point (which is good) and all of those places relate to the database schema I wrote for this game engine (something else you'd have to learn and know). There is a bunch of work involved there to make the code readable so that it can be maintained, but it heavily depends on a caveat feature of Python (overriding the "get attribute" method of a class) you would not be familiar with in C/C++/Java.

Perhaps more than anything else, the engine is at a point where it needs graphical contributions so that there are no remnants of FFT assets in the main branch. Things like sprites, effects, and miscellaneous assets would greatly help the engine's progress. That is to say, without those things (permissions to use those things), I will be unable to publish working examples of some game states to the master branch of the engine. Clearly, that's not a big deal to me; I wrote all of the programming that deals with states and so I have that code already. However, the reason something like this engine doesn't exist already is because it's a lot of work that not just anyone is able to accomplish. I'm trying to make it easy for people to use and maintain, but I will draw the line there in favor of spending my time working on my own gaming project with the engine I've spent so long to help write.

Anyway, thanks for your continued interest in this engine.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Sajátgép on November 15, 2012, 12:29:38 pm
I don't really have any skills in grapics, so I must say I'm sorry about this.

Keep up the good work, I will be watching. D:
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: HAX on December 12, 2012, 09:56:26 pm
So the main goal of this project is to be able to play FFT against others right? If so then i'm excited.

I hope the mechanics remain the same, it does say FFT clone.

As far as contributing goes, i'm proficient with 3D, but no programming, so if i can help i will.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: contaejus on March 28, 2013, 11:06:41 pm
Ah I see you no longer give fucks about this.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Ilium on May 11, 2013, 11:05:29 pm
Hello all. Count me as one of the many who are extremely interested in this project. Has progress here stalled, or are there not any updates? This program would have huge advantages when played alongside another project being developed by myself and several others: Final Fantasy Simulation (FFSim) (http://ffsim.proboards.com). FFSim is the spiritual ancestor to the game Heroes of Ivalice (http://www.heroesofivalice.net/forum.php), a game over six years old with a once huge player base.  The game is a text based forum rpg ran with the mechanics of the original FFT. (Additional reading about the project on this forum here (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=9674.0) and here (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=9568.0).)

I envision Tethical would be perfect to use as the combat system for this game, and we would like to extend our hand in partnership. If there is anything I can do, anything at all, I am at your disposal. I am an experienced programmer with a strong grasp on C++. We also have a great sprite artist doing good work for us at our forum, if you guys have anything specific you need done graphically, let us know. There are a couple of us at FFSim who are deeply interested in the progress of this engine.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on May 12, 2013, 09:05:24 pm
No, progress hasn't stalled on the project as a whole. I've just been working on finishing and sealing up one of the tools associated with the overall project. The engine was to the point where I needed to implement shield blocks, weapon guards, hamedo actions, and the like, and, while I could easily program those types of moves to occur, I wouldn't be able to see them go off in the client without the work I recently put into the sprite animation tool. There are still a few things I have to fix related to that, but the actions in question will make their way into the reference implementation of a battle system (it currently mimics FFT's battle system because it's basically the gold standard for such systems, in my opinion).

As far as supporting the project, it's primarily in Python, which you'll likely find difficult to transition to (as code blocks are represented by indentation and type enforcement is very loose). However, you can read up on Panda3d (the engine the engine is developed on), if you so desire. Mostly, I'd like to have a database of custom FFT sprites freely available for use to contributing members within the context of this particular engine. I'll trade any such contribution for a generic license to non-beta software related to the project. Right now, that only includes the Sprite Animator tool (requires a Windows platform or virtualization), which generates XML files that enable the engine to display all manner of 2D characters, monsters, and effects.

Once I have more than zero sprites that I can offer to contributors, I'll work on a website to deliver them to said contributors. If you choose to send something, please do it via a private message to me here on this forum. Otherwise, you can contribute design and feature criticism on tools or features already associated with the project in order to gain contributor status if that's something you want (namely, access to a beefed up version of the Sprite Animator tool I wrote).

Thanks for your continued interest in this project.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Mobius on May 18, 2013, 08:08:10 am
I'll be around supporting this as much as I can. Mainly, let's focus on getting motivation going back again in this board, as well as activity.


I'll give suggestions and critique where I see the need. Regarding spritework, im already doing a huge monster sheet to get things going.

Pardon me for my self centered attitude, but if Im going to have my own project running on Tethical, then this whole board becomes my project too in a way, and I'll support it as such.

Hell yeah. Let's get this going guys. Think. This is grand. If this pulls through, we'll have no need of hacking FFT anymore, and will do away with all the limits it brings.


Let's do this.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Kagebunji on May 18, 2013, 08:22:11 am
I would love to help, but I am pretty much out of ideas as to what I could do, since al this is really technical stuff. Still, I am constantly following this and really root for this thing to happen.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on May 18, 2013, 01:10:00 pm
Help Tethical by donating a custom sprite you've made. The license would be free for any contributor to use so long as they're using it inside the Tethical engine. I want to eventually have a library of sprites available that will help deter contributors from automatically using Cloud, Ramza, and Delita. I will trade you contributor status, which would give you access to the future sprite library, the currently mostly done sprite animator tool (including paint-in-place and palette tools), and the control panel for after it gets locked up when early testing is finished. Thanks.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Choto on May 18, 2013, 08:11:32 pm
FWIW, the sprite animator is a godsend for doing monster animations Kage. It's like having the MON sheets work on shishi, although in a more limited capacity.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: KingTyrion on January 03, 2014, 07:02:47 pm
Hi guys, so much of this seems like it has been a while since it's been touched on, i don't even know how often you guys check into the forum board anymore. It seems like the test game you have posted at  http://tethical.kivutar.me/node/22   has limited access to when the server is up? Im not sure. I tried it, dl'd the panda 3d runtime, and tried using my haktiks login to log in. I imagine thats not even the right username/pw combo as you are not affiliated with haktiks i'm assuming. Anyways, If there is a testing period coming at some point, I would be more than happy to lend a hand testing. I wish I had programming skills but alas, I do not. Only simple trigger/function manipulation through specifically the warcraft 3 world editor. anyways, I am here to do anything I can, if you'd like, let me know.
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: lirmont on January 04, 2014, 12:42:14 am
Hello! Thanks for your interest in Tethical. To find out what's going on right now, please go read the follow-up on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/100316459/tethical-an-srpg-engine/posts

Once all that's done, it's getting relaunched. Several of those things are done already (demo of card game using Tethical's engine, sprite remixer). I'm spending more time on it than I initially estimated because I think the character customization might just be the niche people would be impressed enough by to actually pledge (instead of hitting the campaign and then moving on).

Keep track of what I do on the project at any of these locations: here (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?board=57.0), twitter (https://twitter.com/lirmont), or youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/lirmont/videos).

Even though you posted here in more than one thread, I'll answer your other questions here. The very general goal is to be able to do whatever FFT can do (from way back in 1997). An example of that is character and effect sprite animations. Sprites are a huge part of what FFT did, and a lot of the time I've spent on this project (and still am spending) has gone directly to that, but, because of that work, you could create any number of FFT-esque sprite effects or complicated character actions (including extraneous attachments, like hats, backpacks, masks). Soon, you'll also be able to perform customization of characters like you might in many recent games (except that those use 3d, and this would be 2d). Similarly, another aspect of FFT is its generous use of bitmap fonts, and I've written a program to help anyone wanting to use Tethical's engine be able to make those very quickly and efficiently. Tethical's engine pulls the output from those programs in natively so that core concepts from FFT can be replicated (but not enforced). There are how-to links in this forum that explain how to set things up to use both Kivutar's version and mine (but mine is still very unstable since it changes frequently). Thanks.

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/sprite-remixer-c006.png)

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/sprite-remixer-c007.png)
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Locke on January 20, 2014, 12:38:23 am
Heya Kivutar!! do you still in this project?
look, i would love to help with something!!!
no,i 'm not a programmer and nothing like that,
but i am certain that i can help out!!
let's talk about it!



~Locke
Title: Re: Tethical, online FFT clone
Post by: Snowmeow on November 22, 2021, 09:12:13 pm
Maaaaaaaaan... And I lost the baking of such a progress?
First of all, congratulations. Perfection. I'm kinda sad because the initial Kickstarter goal was not attained, but it can be tried again.
Second of all, I am not a programmer, nor a spriter, but I have lots of ideas for testing, if you may find this kind of help useful. Here they are:
-About the parties, I suggest a max 4 teams of 5 characters per map (FFT-standard size), to don't congest the map itself. Surely, players hosting maps will not be scarce. For bigger maps, more teams (or teams with more characters) would be allowed.
-About copyrighted content, it's wise to remove it all from the downloadable engine/game, but it would be cool to allow third-parties add content from FFT (And TO, Saiyuki, Hoshigami, etc) and, obviously, original content for versus fighting.
-To the forum spriters, who developed custom sprites for FFT/WotL hacks, I think that it would be a nice opportunity to redesign bigger versions of them, in prior to fit Tethical's larger resolution.
-I think that SquareEnix won't allow presence of Chocobos in an non-FF game, so I suggest two replacements:
The carakiller, featured in "The Future is Wild" documentary, as the evolution of the Crested caracara.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sdJBWs7OOb4/YZxFTzvFYfI/AAAAAAAAB7w/dR_9LFQMs1AV5bhgwQX9tWrbd06sYxf7wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/013_carakiller_by_dinoboygreen_dcdgooe-fullview.png)

The terrorbird, a predator that was ancient for... The DUCK. Due to it be historical, no copyright claims.
(https://earimediaprodweb.azurewebsites.net/Api/v1/Multimedia/194fbc3b-dca4-4b92-a2e9-79c901f8b2cc/Rendition/low-res/Content/Public)

And sorry if I was annoying, or just posted bullpoop. I just want SO MUCH it going forward.