Re-Release Info and Changes

[Sambinoo]

hi hi everyone, i'am new to the forum but i played your mod a long time ago, like a year ago i think, just like everyone says it's fuckawesome o_o, just incredible, amazing work of everyone, i have been following the news in the forum i wish all of you the best and hope everyone is allright, hoping to see more of your work soon, greetings from México! (sorry for my bad english i'm trying xD)

[DeJ]

Greetings Folks!
I'm a huge fan of Jot5 and give very high props to the entire team for this masterpiece.

I, and I'm sure many others, are wondering if there's a projected re-release date for CH1 and then 2 of your highly touted, highly coveted patch.
I really want to get rolling on this game again but am reluctant to do so until the new one drops!

I know some RL shit was going on and I really hope everything turned out well.
Any update you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

[Bonesy]

pretty sure it comes out when it comes out

[DeJ]

Wow Bonesy, now THAT is profound.

Thanks so much for your valuable input.

[3lric]

Its probably cause he's seen the question answered in many other threads in this section. I cannot give an ETA, so his answer isn't exactly wrong. I'll just keep saying soon.

Lots of things are done, and some things aren't done yet. Elaborating any further would include spoilers

I thank you for your interest and kind words though

[RJ Cid]

Do your thing Elric and crew! We're all cheering you on!

When the waiting hurts, keep in mind that they are very ambitious and only want to give you the best!

[DeJ]

Cool -- thanks guys!

I appreciate the update and understand that you don't want to spoil anything.

No reason to rush perfection

[Nyzer]

Lots of things are done, and some things aren't done yet. Elaborating any further would include spoilers

Pretty much! When I was able to get into IRC regularly a couple months back, the other (way more involved) developers were still working out the foundation for one of the new features coming in the rerelease (which I can't remember if it was announced publicly, so I'm staying quiet on that). And even my part in the project required some retooling to pull off when we ran into an unexpected text space issue.

The thing about it is that any new features would pretty much have to be set up for the rerelease, because if some great idea pops up  way later on in development, it'd be too hard to work it into the game when it's already got so much done behind it. So all those things have to be ironed out now, their foundations laid, the groundwork begun. Then it all needs to be tested to make sure it works properly.

Jot5 isn't just some little fanfic continuation of FFT. Elric and everyone else design it with the care and attention that a real, proper sequel game would get, even if it DOES use the same engine. Think about the differences between Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, especially in the original versions. Granted, MM isn't quite as well loved because it had many differences from the usual Legend of Zelda setup, but it was a massive improvement all around just from the gameplay mechanics alone.

Then, understand that the Jot5 team is trying to surpass that level of improvement. That's how ambitious the rerelease is.

[KingUrameshi]

This game is gonna be awesome. Rockin Spelunky and Star Ocean: First Departure in the meantime.

[DeJ]

Thanks for your portion Nyzer.

It is very interesting to read about what's going on behind the scenes and when you put it that way, I can understand the time commitment and the careful planning that must go into this whole process. The ambition behind this project is remarkable in its own right and the 'perfection or bust' mentality is one to be adopted. I love the vision and the idea to massively improve the game itself - over all systems that can be altered.

As KingUrameshi said, this game is going to be awesome! I, as well as many others, will happily carve out countless hours to enjoy it! I am very much looking forward to this and figured to send you guys props (not that you need any more motivation). Keep up the great work guys and I'll keep waiting patiently

Thanks!!

[Guru]

Yeah I can't wait to see the re-release. I already spent countless hours just playing the current ch1 to get ready for it  With all the changes you guys made I'll definitely play countless more lol. Looking forward to seeing what you guys have in store for re-release and then ch2! Ik you had a lot of rl bs get in the way recently but it's nice to know that even though rl slowed it down, in the end nothing will stop you guys. Thank you guys for all your dedication and hard work!

[DeJ]

Couldn't have said it better myself Guru! I completely share your enthusiasm for this project!

[3lric]

Thanks guys. I know I'm terrible about updating (unless asked on IRC, hint, hint, nudge, nudge) but I thought I'd let you know that we finished ~433 item descriptions for Jot5 the other day, which should be every single item thru the rest of the entire game. We are trying to do most things in this fashion right now. If we have something that CAN be complete through the end of the game, then we want to do so, (ie: items, skills, etc) so that everything left is just events, story, attack.out and other stuff like that (which is actually done for a good portion of the game currently)

I understand that this takes a lot of time and I still want to thank you all for your patience. The goal of the Jot5 team (which is primarily Team XETA+C now) has always been to make Jot5 seem less like a mod and more like sequel or it's own game. We know you guys loved the attention to detail in the initial release and the re-release adds much more of it.

Big thanks to Twinees, Jumza, nyzer and Xif for the item descriptions. I don't know if any of you here have ever tried to write more than 10 in a row, but seriously, 433? It was pretty intense, Twinees went beast mode last week and knocked out the last 150-200 or so himself. Xif and myself had done many of them before that, but it kind of tappered off when I got sick, so having Twin, Jumza and nyzer knock the rest of them out was a big help.

Many people may not know that the team currently consists of about 5-6 people +/- 1 or 2. So everyone has their own amount of work on their shoulders, as we pretty much have 1 (sometimes 2) person handling their own respective departments, while I kinda float between everything except ASM and spriting. We've tried to recruit more people to the team, but majority of people only want to do FFTP work, and that's definitely not something we are in need of lol.

If anyone is interested in working with us on Jot5, we are always looking for new talent. However, before trying to hop on board, i strongly suggest reading THIS post. Looking for talent does not mean we are desperate, so without some kind of skill or ability that we are in need of, it likely wouldn't work out. We ARE however, willing to teach, but only if initiative is shown, I will no longer be attempting to teach anyone events that isn't willing to spend the time to learn them, nor make time to be here at least once every day or 2. The same goes for everything else we do. This isn't me being a dick, this is me not wanting to waste anymore time training people who don't have drive to make a game.

Again, thank you all for your patience and I can very much promise that in the end it will be worth it. I will try to update again soon with a list of some of the bigger changes you'll see in the re-release. I've have a record of them for some time now, I just haven't had the time to sort through it all and make it into a cohesive forum post, as my time is usually better spent doing other Jot5 stuff

[RJ Cid]

Thanks mighty Overseer.

I recently started working out again, as I'm studying to be a personal trainer, and my favorite part of any workout is after the nutrition and shower are done I can lay down and play a good strategy game while my body recovers.

As long as your team keeps up the good work, I will maintain all my excitement, support and enthusiasm. You guys are gonna blow everyone away and make a lot of people happy. I mean A LOT! Vanilla has a sick following (rightfully so) and people are going to be finding and flocking to this mod for months. Not sure what else to say.... I love you???

[Guru]

Sweet deal! Glad to hear everything is going well and looking forward to seeing the changes! I wish I could offer some assistance right now but I do not have any extra time at the moment. Hopefully that will change in a few months here. I have still been trying to learn how to event in my spare time but it is going much slower now than it was. Still moving forward though! Good luck with everything guys, I will try and offer some assistance when I can.

[RJ Cid]

Got a question, and hopefully one that has not already been addressed...

Can you give the random monsters single items/pieces of equipment to steal? I thought of it because I saw a patch where a Worker 8 enemy had an Iron Helm. Considering that you could steal items from monsters in the main series, I thought it seemed practical, and it would give the thieves a lot more to do.

Nothing rare of course, since it's only Chapter 1 & 2, but giving them anything worth stealing repeatedly would make the random encounters much more interesting. Just a suggestion, if nothing else.

[3lric]

We won't have that in Jot5. However, with the new crafting/synthesis system, you'll be able to scavenge (provided you have the skill via learning it, or other means) dead monsters for materials used in crafting.

I want to make a post soon about what you can expect to see in the re-release since all the info is all over. I'll try to do that within the next few days.

[DaHammerCrush]

Any Updates? I know that I am not the only one that checks back regularly to see if any news is up about the progress of the project, and I know that as soon as re-release does drop that the forums will light up again with comments.

Right now I think that most people are just a little disconnected from the project because of the perceived rate of progress being very low and whether that is in fact the case or not. We see the forum start date of 3 years ago come and go and no news in months. I hope that the project is still on track.

We loved Chapter 1 and look forward to all the changes to it in the re-release, as well as the prospect of what Chapter 2 and beyond will hold. Any update that you guys have would be welcomed.

Crush

[Angel]

Still on track, we just made a lot of work for ourselves to further improve the final product. There's still work being done daily, though sometimes the work we do increases rather than decreases the total work load. But it's all for The Greater Good.

[3lric]

Angel is correct on all points here.

The fact of the matter is that I would love to post a big update detailing everything we've been doing. However, every time I want to do so, I end up working on the project itself instead since I always feel my time is better spent doing so. I realize that this makes it seem like progress is slow going or has even halted, but we can assure you that this is very much not the case.

The latest progress has been in descriptions and skillsets. For example, as many of you who have kept up with my previous posts know, we are implementing a sort of crafting system. You can expect to be able to scavenge monsters for materials, do marks to mine for ore, collect wood, and even manage a farm, all to be able to create your own items instead of being forced to buy or find everything you use. However, what many people -don't- know is how long something like this takes. When you add in the fact that we renamed almost every item in the game + came up with all the materials, that was 429 items that needed to be named and then have descriptions written for them. This was no easy task and took months not to mention the custom inventory icons that had to be made. Now that that is done, we still have to figure out exactly how many of what material you will get from each of these things, and then with that information, we can decide how many of each item is needed to synth each item we have able to be synthed, even though the items used for synth for each item -have- already been chosen, the amounts needed have not.

Now, ontop of that, as many of you also know, an internal goal of the re-release is to have nearly EVERYTHING done thru the end of the game aside from some story stuff and the events for Ch3 and 4. This last few weeks, we've named every single job/skillset that I can imagine will appear in the game, and written descriptions for ALL of those as well. Currently I'm working through choosing skills for all of these skillsets and actually have all but a few completely filled out, we will even have a few skills left over to add in for a miniboss or two later on if we so choose to do so. The only real thing left for skills is implementation and testing. (Before you get excited, we are taking measures to ensure that no information from a future chapter will be accessible via tactext or other means, just because it's done, doesn't mean we are going to spoil our work by letting you see into the future.)

I know it might seem silly to some people for us to do it this way, since it seems like it could be easier to just do 1 chapters worth of content each time we want to release a chapter, but this causes problems in the end when we decide to change something for the better or rewrite something, etc. With us doing it this way, it takes a HUGE amount of anxiety and workload off of our shoulders for future chapters, and ensures that future chapters production time will be far shorter than they are currently, since the only things we will be working at that point will be story and events. Good news is that the story has always been planned out, it's more just brainstorming and getting everything nailed down and broken down into event scripts. Durbs used to do this, but has been replaced by Angel/Toshiko, who has been doing a phenomenal job revamping the first 2 chapters of dialogue.

Again, I know this has been a long time coming, but we are ANYTHING but slacking off. You can expect to see 6 new marks in Chapter 1, plus the marks associated with material gathering. You'll be able to read our new version of rumors at the bars known as Bar Banter, which details the goings on of Ivalice from the eyes of some of the commoners who frequent said bars. You can expect to see an entirely rebuilt Marks system, which will replace the propositions from Vanilla. You can expect to be able to read and play thru the Sound Novels in english. You can EXPECT to be amazed by these and many other things we've done for the re-release.

In the end, yes, it is hard waiting on a game that is being made by a team of perfectionists. However, at the same time, you can always confirm that progress is ongoing, and if you contact me via IRC, maybe ill even shoot you a video or two. Our Team doesn't give up, which is more than I can say for 99% of the modding community on the internet. I promised many years ago to deliver you all the largest FFT mod that has ever existed, and I fully plan to deliver this. We do this all you for, the fans, words cannot express the warmth I've felt from all the positive feedback, LPs and thousands of downloads we've gotten. Our goal is to return that favor to the best of our ability and to pull no punches in doing so.