Final Fantasy Hacktics

Time/Feature Estimate Spreadsheet: Kickstarter Estimate XLS (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/Tethical Kickstarter Estimate.xls) (ODS (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/Tethical Kickstarter Estimate.ods)).

--

As many of you who frequent the Tethical board may know, I've been working on the tools related to the sRPG engine, Tethical, for a long time. It's been a whole two years now! In that time, I've written a FFT map exporter, two fully-featured pieces of software, a drag-and-drop formula designer, a complex game data-management geared database, and started work on putting it all to use in a reference implementation game.

Now, more than ever, I need your help. I'm (hopefully) starting a kickstarter to get this thing finished. Most of the funds will pay for programming costs. Up to now, I've been able to use my own money and circumstance to provide software and engine features. However, I won't be able to do that without new capital.

Python is the programming language the engine is written in; C# is the programming language the tools are written in. The going rate for an outsourced Python oDesk.com programmer is anywhere from $4 an hour to $55 an hour. Similarly, the going rate for an outsourced C# programmer is anywhere from $3 an hour to $60 an hour. Additionally, it's my experience that you have to deal with time conflicts and the language barrier, especially for ambitious features. Of course, I'd like to do it all myself, and I'm willing to pro-rate the wage I'm used to ($20 an hour) in order to accomplish that.

I estimate there's probably around 40 more business weeks worth of work to be completed before the primary tool (the Tethical Control Panel) is completed, such that it can be used to fully manipulate a game running on the Tethical platform. That includes making the necessary programming additions to the actual engine. That puts the total around $20,000 at $12.50 an hour for 1,600 hours (pro-rated from $32,000 at $20.00 an hour). I will have an exhaustive list of all of the things that need to be done with time estimates and an amended total by the end of the week.

Anyway, to help make this future kickstarter a success, I'd appreciate feedback on these tentative goals (whether you think they are affordable/reasonable, what you'd like to see added or swapped out -- anything). For those of you who are new to kickstarter, they break pledges (money) into categories, where hopefully the more alluring awards are further down the list, costing more. Additionally, there is a concept of pledging more to the project than is necessary, instituting things known as "stretch goals", which add additional things. As this is mostly a digital thing, I'm having trouble making it competitive (which is why I'm posting this for review).


Pledge Levels:

• $5 or more - A place in the engine-level "Special Thanks" credits crawl of the reference implementation game. A "Special Thanks" badge.


• $10 or more - Contributor status, giving you license to use all the tools associated with this project and the demonstration game assets that have been contributed (contributed assets for use only with Tethical-engine games). Your choice of a "Very Special Thanks" badge, and all of the above.


• $25 or more - Up to two first names of your choice put into the reference implementation game's name pool; standard English name-casing required. Your choice of a "Name Designer" badge, and all of the above.


• $35 or more - Design an item to be put into the reference implementation game; name, description, and optional image required. Item will be buried in a chest on a map. Your choice of an "Item Designer" badge, and all of the above.


• $50 or more - Design a recruited character; requires name, character alignment, paragraph-length general description, and may optionally come equipped with the item you designed at the $35-pledge level. Your choice of a "Character Designer" badge, and all of the above.


• $200 or more (10 available) - Design a class to be put into the reference implementation game; requires name, skillset name, skills, skill prices in approximate job point costs, skill target types (self, team, enemy), skill target area (general description), and optional custom sprite (note: you must own said sprite to provide it). Your choice of a "Class Designer" badge, and all of the above.


• $500 or more (5 available) - Design a game feature (ex. crafting) to  be put into the reference implementation game; it must be able to be completed in less than 40 hours of work. Your choice of a "Feature Designer" badge, and all of the above.


• $1000 or more (5 available) - Design a feature (ex. particle effects) for an existing tool or for the Tethical game engine; it must be able to be completed in less than 80 hours of work. Your choice of an "Software Designer" badge, and all of the above, except the $500-pledge level awards.

Stretch Goals

• $30,000 or more - A dedicated server to host the reference implementation game on the internet (which includes online matches, visible badges, etc).


• $40,000 or more - A generic reference implementation state facilitating inter-game battle matches (which would include optional balancing at the server-level).


• $??? or more - ?


• $60,000 or more - Tools are made open-source, and the licensing is removed on the tools (would not apply to the contributions, because those need to be tracked).


• $70,000 or more - I'll livestream at least 10 hours a month of me programming. I may optionally take realtime suggestions during that period.

As always, thanks for your continued interest in this project. If you haven't checked out this project in depth, most of the threads on this board contain lots of development pictures. Thanks.

Well the rewards/pledge amounts seem pretty good actually.. I just have no clue how much interest the design of a game gets on kickstarter. I think getting it to a point (which you may be at) that you can show some animated examples of events of battle sequences would go a long way as people are probably more moved by fireworks than screenshots of design features. I really do hope it gets alot of attention and support when you put it up though, you deserve it from the work you've done.

Thanks! Here's the plan for what the video will entail:

• (The music I want to align the following with is at -4:04:000, and I want to use it because it has three major parts to the song with I want to line up with: http://freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/197114/ (http://freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/197114/)).


• Introduction screen (reminiscent of the map name screen from FFT): title text "Tethical sRPG Engine"


• Screen wash + winning condition screen: title text ("Conditions for Victory"), sub-text ("Impress KickStarter Audience!", with "Kick" in white gradient and "Starter" in green gradient); image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-001.png); clip: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/001-xvid.avi).


• Concept introduction screen: title text "Battle"; image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-101.png).


• A very short flash of a certain White Aegis (knight) swinging a sword at a bat (MON sprite) on the "Morning Mandalia" map with full HUD implemented.


• Concept introduction screen: title text "Events"; image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-102.png).


• The first half of the dialogue event that leads up to the battle of the previous section (essentially shows sprites, dialogue font, and vanity dialogue boxes).


• Concept introduction screen: title text "Art Tools"; image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-103.png).


• Sub-concept introduction screen: title text "Sprite Animation Tool"; image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-104.png).


• I plan to have it show sprite animator burn through loading dark blade.


• Then, opening a frame for editing.


• Then, changing color or something to update it (causing the tool to immediately switch over to the new animation).


• Then, a demonstration of the contribution browser to download a sprite.


• Then, a demonstration of loading the sprite downloaded through the contribution browser with added images for the named attachments.


• Sub-concept introduction screen: "Unicode Image Font Tool"; image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-105.png).


• It initially loads the font Lijj and Mobius put together.


• Then, I want to cycle through the various color blocks and variants.


• Then, I want to show that the effects are all contained in the program.


• Concept introduction screen: "Managerial Tools"; image: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-video-106.png).


• First, the map editor.


• Second, the items editor.


• Third, a short section from the long demo I did of the formula editor.


• Fourth, the music editor.


• Fifth, the art directives.


• Finally, I want to show the Tethical game intro video I made.


• That will fade out into just the map-like background with the estimated delivery date (ex. "September 2014").


• That text will fade to the pertinent credits (including credits for the art and music).

Clips: 001 (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/001-xvid.avi) (intro sequence) and 002 (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/002-xvid.avi) (just title text).

Why, you should have said this earlier.

You have my full support there with any sprite poses you might need. Like the bat hurt poses. And the party sprites. Do mind that I am travelling, so it might come off slow.

You know I'm no artist, and my prolific failures are especially well-documented in this particular forum, but I've got the good start material you and Lijj have already done. So, I plan to do it myself. As it will be very short, the amount of things I can potentially mess up should be relatively low. I will just placeholder the rest of stuff so that, where characters would be more animated, they'll just be really predisposed to standing. It's pretty easy to hide that stuff behind text boxes and interface; I'm not worried about it looking sub-par, as I expect people will be too busy drooling over your extended-portait art. I'm going to ninja-edit in the parts in that post as I get them done (ex. the part with the multi-colored text is already done). Thanks!

I was thinking how the screen introductory animation could have the camera rotate overhead; make some sprites show first as front poses, then side and sometimes a back pose, like when you rotate the camera in FFT.

Those are not made yet..

Then there's the Knight striking animation.

The battle scene will just jump straight to focus on the attack part (no intro). The default vanilla rotate and slide will definitely be pared down to just being a top-down slide for the event, conveniently ignoring the need for all those other views. My plan is that the hero group will need NE poses (which I know are not done, but I will frankensprite them by drawing over an existing sprite in sprite animator, which should be much less noticeably amateur considering it's a view mostly of their backs), and the monsters (bats, because I can't show Marlboros) will need SW poses (which you did already). Come to think of it, this is kind of a field test for all the tools I wrote.

Make it pro as possible for the swing-attack animation! It won't be too much work to make a sprite set with just just one attack. I think angle change would be really nice as well.
Top-slide AND rotate to awe Kickstarter!

Did I ever give you the fairy sprite? I'll post a spritesheet of it for your use.

I don't think you've posted it, but that got me thinking that I'd like to request permission to use the flan sprite instead. The event is designed with infectious-type monsters, and that would fit perfectly in place of the Marlboros that were in the original (and I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone here). Thanks.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamg Flan. The backpose too? I'm not thrilled with the way that turned out, but if he augments the nasty vibe you're going for I guess it's all good.

If there are back poses, I will do my best to hide them. The event portion will probably be done tomorrow, and hopefully I'll get the interface stuff done tomorrow, too. Thanks.

\o/  Flan

Also cant wait to see how events work!

No units on the field yet (still trying to get the back poses of the actual characters in the event done), and I had to spend time ripping out the code I wrote to make crappy fonts (i.e. fonts made by hand with errors) display semi-correctly. But... Fonts (Lijj & Mobius), expanded portraits (Mobius), maps -- Oh, my!

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t01.png)

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t02.png)

Whoa! That looks great so far! Only the parchment needs to be extended a bit further on the right side to meet the chocobo's neck.

Not without coming out the back of the other guy's head...

...maybe flip it? have the faces aiming at the outside of the screen instead of inside...

@lijj: I'll get that fixed.

--

Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-e01.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-xvid.avi).

Credits:

• Smash - Character design, event text, extended portraits, Eleanor sprite, and Steeling bat sprites.


• Lijj - Font and UI design.


• Kagebunji - Guardian sprite and Hector sprite (Hector: Kagebunji, Jimmy, Twinees).


• Choto - Flan sprite.


• lirmont - Map.

Thanks to everybody that helped me out with this event (you can still help out by criticizing the parts you don't like; I may be able to fix them). Thanks!

--

So, I wanted to have this event done by yesterday, but I had a flash about how to handle events better. So, I decided to program that feature instead.

Laying out Unit Placer Objects
(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t03.png)



Anyway, the picture in the spoiler doesn't include the code I'll write to make the actual movement across the map and other miscellaneous actions happen. However, what it does do is walk straight through that conversation ("Early Morning Battle on the Plains"), firing off events as it hits them.



So, as the dialogue is walked during the event, the walker chooses to run any handlers for the event names that are attached to a given line. These are currently set up to be run before the line happens, and, as such, your handler can delay the conversation for however long it feels like. At any rate, this particular event has 3 line events it can respond to. Sequence and Parallel objects can be used to perform animations from the context of a handler. These particular ones include the signal to the dialogue walker to mark the handler as done as the last part of the animations, so the dialogue walker will wait until the animations finish. However, you could just as easily put that signal first, so that (if there are not other handlers stalling the dialogue walker) your animation would happen during the text being displayed. Furthermore, because it's set up like this, you can signal the same actions based on line events regardless of whatever active language the player might have set (so long as you use the exact same names for the line events).

Looks friggin' awesome. This will definitely grab the attention of any FFT fan.

Haha, glad you liked it. That is definitely my aim. Thanks again for the flans. They deliver!

Oddly the second line of text is taller than the first.

Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Different Background, Suggested Changes

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t04.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-2-1-xvid.avi).


Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Regular Background, Suggested Changes

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t05.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-2-2-xvid.avi).

--

Fixes and other changes in this version:

• Font image updates from Lijj.


• Font scale update (reported by Lijj).


• Different Clarion sprite (provided by Smash).


• Different Alistair sprite (provided by Smash).


• Different background, where applicable (provided by Smash).


• Bat animation changed to be 3 frames only (reported by Smash).


• Force-shorten text to increase readability (reported by Smash).


• Changes to Brangwine's entry animation.


• Addition of some equipment attachments to Alistair (hopefully to help hit home the idea that he's an Aegis; reminder: "aegis" literally means a shield; now he has one).


• Changed the exit animation, because I don't have back frames for the bats.

Thanks.

--

Code annotations: overview (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-overview.png) and full (http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event.png).

Thanks for those code annotations. That should be of particular interest to Elric. It's not quite as simple as ASM-based commands in EVSP, but not terribly intimidating either. Oh Hey, There's no sprite limit! :D

Oh one more suggestion, should the flans be in their walking sequence since the bats are in their flapping sequence?

also... I thought the intent was to avoid use of FFT copyrighted stuff, why the chocobo?

I'll change it so that the flans use their walking sequence. That was probably an unintended copy-paste decision.

Yes, chocobos are trademarked by Square-Enix (trademark (http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:ni3m70.2.1)), and of course that particular chocobo is directly ripped from FFT (which is copyrighted). His name is Brangwine, and he's part of a story of 4 chapters written by Smash (that's something like 20+ events, and this is one of them). Brangwine (and the music) will conveniently disappear from the version that's cut into the kickstarter video. The reference implementation game will not be related to this (amazing as the new art is); this customization/cohesion is just what should be aspired to (I mean, minus the chocobo, but there is reason for that).

I, of course, want to make sure anyone who comes looking here after seeing the video on kickstarter has something to see, too.

Thanks!

Hey, on second thought, I think the video with the background actually exceeded my original expectations. It looks amazing when viewed from the top part of the map.

Damn, this is looking good.


I still got critique, but it's just small stuff now. Nitpicks. The main issues were taken care of perfectly above. 

Finishing touches, if there's still time:
I could give a recolor to those flans, as they're way too saturated and don't really fit with the others. Same for the Knights.


Also.. Maybe it's just me, but I really miss the text being drawn as it is spoken, with sound, like the original FFT. It would do wonders to this, but im not sure we want to add to Lirmont's programming bulk, or if it's even possible to implement in time. :P

Just get any replacements to me in a PM or this thread. I forgot Monday was a work holiday, so the goal is a Tuesday submission (or, like Monday night) to kickstarter with the full promo video being posted on Sunday or Monday here.

No, the type-as-they-speak feature is not long. It's maybe 5 lines of code if it's linear. I just absolutely hate what it encourages ( l i t t l e mo n e y ) if I write it like how FFT wrote it (erroneously? treating spaces as spoken characters).

(little money) was done with a clearly untested Delay command in vanilla. There was no excuse for it, hence why you will never see anything like that in Jot5.

Also, I don't think saturation is the problem with the Flans, they look great, but they are clearly a different art style, as they still look FFT (as they were intended for) while the rest of the group looks less like FFT Style now.

That was refreshing. The walks look pretty good too ,not perfect but maybe with some minor frame editing they will.
Those guardian sprites.. they have a decent portion of Square's property on them; I think for that reason alone they should not be used.

EDIT/UPDATE

I like Smash's bg a lot!
Alistair's walk needs the most work IMO

Quote from: Lijj on August 31, 2013, 05:46:03 pm
Those guardian sprites.. they have a decent portion of Square's property on them; I think for that reason alone they should not be used.

I have to disagree. The guardians look so good.


Not to mention, -I at least- don't have the time from today to monday, to make new Knights from scratch. Someone else may, however.
I recolored them from blue to brown and sent them to Lirmont just now.

@lijj, I didn't realize the guardian was made that way; thanks for pointing that out. I'll look for some way to replace the squire chest, knight cloak, knight feet, and knight hands. I was already thinking about it, but I'm definitely going to have to make the battle footage be of the reference implementation. Hmm, do you mind if I use your red mage sprite and have it cast that ice spell we did an effect for a while ago? Thanks!

Of course Lirmont! Only, that sprite doesn't appeal to many people so maybe something else. Ice would be nice though :).
I can try to help with the knights situation.. we just need some back-walking frames right?

That is correct. They just walk in and go straight to standing. There are no other frames used now that the out animation is straight up. If you do help, thanks. I'll work on getting the video of that other scene done in the meantime. I have to do some recalculations to fit the 704x488 screen size, but I should have it by tonight. Thanks again.

This is the recolor Mobius refers to:

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/guardian_male.fft-type1.png)

Here's what I've got. I can do the back walking frames if you all approve of this design.
Left-most: Original, middle: Smash helm/palette, right-most: Fully custom (new cloak, boots and gloves[minor helm edit, one color change]).
(http://i.imgur.com/dgcsg1W.png)

Wow. I like the one on the right. The cloak exudes the kind of presumed dignity that an honor guard might have; it seems like it'd fit well with how Alistair's cloak turned out. Thanks for doing this.

Sweet..
Here is a now fully custom (very partial) sheet..
(http://i.imgur.com/kBRAf1o.gif)
Looks like I'll have to touch up the gauntlets a bit tomorrow.

Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Newest Suggested Changes

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t06.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-3-xvid.avi).

--

Fixes and other changes in this version:

• Different Guardian sprite (provided by Lijj).


• Changes to Flan animation phase (reported by Choto).


• Typewritten text.


• Chicken noises (link (http://freesound.org/people/scholzn/sounds/133443/)).

This is orgasmic Lijj

It's the 'proper' knight class FFT never had.


EDIT: Video was posted at the same time, didn't realize before.
About the latest video, this is almost flawless. I'd say it's ready. The guards make the whole thing look even better; even though it was only a cape change.. Makes such a big difference.

Speed of the text should be faster, that is all.

Super glad you guys like the new guardian update! Excellent job on the helmet design Smash.
I agree the text seems too slow in this demo.

The added chicken noise is great! This demo definitely does the job of pumping up the audience I think; looks so fun!

Also, even though you can hardly see the details behind the cloak; I redid the boots and arms from scratch as well. So we have a fully custom sprite for the demo (yay)!

Well done Lijj \o/ very nice

Quote from: Mobius on August 31, 2013, 06:03:25 pm
I have to disagree. The guardians look so good.

Not to mention there is no time to make new Knights from scratch.

Smash, it's not about looking good or not, it's about copyright, which is the entire POINT in the first place.
Also, to hear you tell someone what there isn't time for was pretty funny.

None the less, great work fellas.

Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Cumulative Changes

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t07.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-4-xvid.avi).

--

Fixes and other changes in this version:

• %30 faster typewritten effect.


• Music fade out from event test added back in.

--

I mean, copyright issues being the point, he's probably only a chocobo sprite and some music away from having something totally free of that. Admittedly, finding someone capable of doing music like that and willing to do it for this project in this day and age may be iffy. I think I read something on one of these boards where someone wanted to trade something for music; they had a link to their other work (which did sound symphonic like FFT's stuff).

Now, of course, most of those sprites only half-exist at the moment, but there was a lot of smoke and mirrors in FFT, too. The stuff that isn't smoke and mirrors are the animations -- both at the engine level (my sprite animation wrapper) and underlying engine level (Panda3d's animation feature; Sequence/Parallel/intervals) --, the fonts (courtesy of my font tool and other real fonts), and the map and its texture (with the help of the 3d modeling software, Blender). And, hopefully, this particular work (needing to create an event) will help make it easier for all events going forward (regardless of game) in this engine. I mean, it was already easy to get to the event context, but now the actual event is much more human-readable. There's still work to be done, but this is a big step (in my opinion) towards continuing to go in the right direction as the engine develops.

Yeah I tried to contact that guy about music before as well. But once he realized he made a big derp by heaving this long post about wanting to know how to
PLAY Final Fantasy Hacktics. He kinda disappeared.

There is also Brittmarv though, he does wonderful music and may be willing to contribute to this.

I'll send him a PM

Quote from: lirmont on September 01, 2013, 02:11:27 pm
Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Cumulative Changes

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t07.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-4-xvid.avi).

--

Fixes and other changes in this version:

• %30 faster typewritten effect.


• Music fade out from event test added back in.

--

Perfection.

Quote
I mean, copyright issues being the point, he's probably only a chocobo sprite and some music away from having something totally free of that. Admittedly, finding someone capable of doing music like that and willing to do it for this project in this day and age may be iffy. I think I read something on one of these boards where someone wanted to trade something for music; they had a link to their other work (which did sound symphonic like FFT's stuff).

There's quite a number of decent free music and game assets out there in the web. It's just a matter of digging them out.

For example
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3088

Yes, but, unfortunately for everyone trying to make their own game, you don't just need one perfect song. You need a pack of songs that fit well together (and maybe even adhere to your art direction). We may be at that point in time now where it's already possible to find that right now on the internet, but I don't know; I'll believe it when I see it, so somebody show it to me. :P

--

Darker music version video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-4-2-xvid.avi) (music: Orpheus-I, http://dstgames.com/, http://www.nosoapradio.us/).

Video thoughts:

Layout:
1) You simply do not design a cutscene where it is focused on the backsides of your characters for the majority of the time. I know that there might be spriting limitations, but you really need to flip the map around so you can see the front of the characters. It is really a waste of amazing portraits since you can't see how they relate to the characters. Plus the map would look better rotated with the characters facing the camera as well. This is definitely my biggest concern.
2) This whole situation is confused by the lack of text bubble pointers to indicate who is talking. I can tell who is who, but most viewers wont. BTW I still hate the rough jagged edges on the right of the text bubbles. They should really be squared or rounded.

Pacing:
1) Speed up the text presentation speed, but leave the complete dialog up for a bit longer than you were in previous versions. I hate reading slower than I naturally would, but then before it was moving on too quickly.
2) Having multiple characters walk on screen together can be cool, instead of just one at a time.
3) Have main character guy say his lines referring to the monsters occur after the characters come on screen. Cut the last line from visor guy.

Other:
1) The map itself his dreary compared to the character palette and needs to be brightened up.
2) More consistency. The main character doing the sing talk animation during some lines and not others is odd.
3) When the main character walks back to talk to the chick, he is going to slow or the animation is running to fast so it is out of sync.

More about the actual dialog in the future.

I can do some of these. I won't do others.

Layout:
1. Most of the characters only exist in back poses. I agree that normally it would not be good, but I read through all the events written by Mobius. Clarion seems like he has a sense of over-importance and a lot of hubris. He's the only one that you get to see the face of here and animations. I think it's actually good that way, chalk it up to a difference of opinion.
2. I can look at getting text bubble pointers. I'm not touching that jagged edges issue; that belongs on a different board.

Pacing:
1. Is it still too slowly printed? The wait is at 1/10th of a second. I can definitely leave it up there a little longer, though.
2. I can rearrange the animation so that they show up in groups, but the event description said they had just been walking through a forest. I pictured it as though they were catching up to each other (slowpokes in back).
3. I'm not changing lines; that belongs on a different board.

Other:
1. I can change the texture, but I guess I'd prefer it if you make whatever changes yourself and suggest that (since I was the one that came up with the texture in the first place and thought it was fine). Here is the texture:

(http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/mandalia-plains.png)

2. It's more for the hand movement, because I tried to make him pretentious with what I had.
3. I can adjust that speed.

Put anything dialogue-specific on the other board. Thanks.

Note to everyone. If we are to brighten the textures, then I'll have to brighten the map background as well, so they can fit accordingly. ;)

My opinion is that this texture+BG looks good as a dark morning scenario, and goes well with the sprites. But there can be daylight ones if Lirmont is up to it. Got to be careful to not take it overboard in brightness/saturation so it looks like an Advance game.

Quote from: Cheetah on September 01, 2013, 09:26:00 pm
BTW I still hate the rough jagged edges on the right of the text bubbles. They should really be squared or rounded.

You've been at this for quite some time. 

It's not like the textboxes look perfect to me, (In fact, decent,) but, still. Your feedback is kinda itching me to go to Pixeljoint to try and get a better textbox suggestion. Although this may take a bit of time and go way past Lirmont's Tuesday deadline.
It's Lirmont's call if he wants it for the demo, if not, I'll do it anyways, but not today as im a bit busy IRL.



And something else. I originally designed the textboxes to go with a slightly smaller screen res.

(http://i40.tinypic.com/atq9s6.jpg)

The screen here on the demo is 16 pixels wider in all directions (It would cover the black area in the above picture), which is why the chocobo portrait had some empty space to the side. Textboxes still perform well, nevertheless, but may have to be made wider.

Quote from: Mobius on September 02, 2013, 09:51:42 am

You've been at this for quite some time. 

I know and I don't want to be annoying, but it does drive me nuts. Definitely do a pixeljoint or wayofthepixel.net thread to get some feedback. It would just be great to see more of your stuff there and get some advice from some other master pixelers (I am not one).

Layout:
1) The front of the sprites just look better. What if you had the beginning as is with them all walking in from the back, and then did a 180 of the map to show the front of them for the remainder of the event?
2) Smash's text bubble pointers look great. In terms of width, why aren't they just adjustable? The chocobo's wark should just be much narrower, this is how it is done in FFT, and then the pointer can also be moved along the top or bottom of the text bubble.

Pacing:
1) The pop in of the text bubbles looks great btw. But yes, text still needs to be a bit faster.
2) It is fine either way. It is just cool to show off the tech that you can do simultaneous animations.
3) I will annoy Smash then, though I could be convinced that it is fine as is.

Other:
1) I just don't know what to think here. On it's own it looks good, with the blue background it looks good, and with the lighter part of the gradiated background it looks good. But against the dark part of the gradiated background it looks too dark.
2) Can you do evtchr like animations? Just inserting a few custom animations of him just raising his hand, or head turns to have characters look around adds a lot of flare to an event. Plus super easy to do the pixeling from what you already have.
3) Cool.

Tuesday deadline, ouch. Well I haven't read all your plans for the kickstarter in terms of goals and stuff. But my advice would be take your time. Having an excellently polished presentation, with many pictures, videos, diagrams, and such from the beginning is what will get you money. You have to make an amazing first impression, particularly for such a nich product, and you really want to avoid any copy write issues.

Royalty free music (http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/)
Maybe it can help

Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Internal Release

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t09.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-5-xvid.avi).

--

Fixes and other changes in this version:

• Nature noises (reported by Ishtar; attributed to Leandros.Ntounis at http://www.freesound.org/people/Leandros.Ntounis/sounds/163607/).


• Text pointers (reported by Cheetah).


• Typewritten text speed increase (reported by Cheetah).


• Text display length increase (reported by Cheetah).


• Clarion speed increase (reported by Cheetah).


• Entry grouping (reported by Cheetah).

Thanks, and that's also the last of the changes I'm doing to this. Feel free to continue to discuss changes, but I'm shelfing this event. As I've stated previously, the cut that makes it to the video will not be this one. It will be devoid of chocobos and music (in favor of a video-wide background music). As a reminder, eventing is only something you can do with this project. The kickstarter is not to make events; it's to finish the tools so that the process can easily be started by anyone with the time and motivation to do it. Thanks again for all the feedback and the graphical assets that have gone into this event. The project's eventing as a whole will be better for it.

--

Alistair Agnarsson

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffts/alistair-agnarsson.fft-type1.png)

Nice improvements Lirmont. Text speed looks good with a nice length of time for text presentation. The speech bubble arrows are a great help, they move awkwardly at times, but better to have them than not. The entry grouping is also more dynamic, very good. Oh and Clarion's walk is matched up really nicely. I didn't notice the nature sfx, where are they?

The music is loud, but listen when it fades near the last 10% of the video. The nature track plays during the whole thing, though.

--

12 minutes and 30 seconds later...

Whole video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/video.avi) (451MB; ~12:30 duration).
The music that plays behind my voice: http://freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/197114/ and http://freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/197115/

--

Credits Section

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-credits-001.png)

Here's an update on the back walking frames of Alistair the Aegis:

I left the hair static; I was going to make it sway a bit, but i think it looks pretty good as it stands:

Update:  (http://i.imgur.com/f9PIBwO.gif)  Original:  (http://i.imgur.com/sXTEGKv.gif)

Early Morning Battle on the Plains (Event)
Internal Release with Lijj's Improved Alistair

(http://darkabstraction.com/showOff/ffhackticks/kickstarter-event-t10.png)

Video: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/003-6-xvid.avi).

--

As for progress, I went to verify my identity with Kickstarter's automated tool, and they don't believe I exist as a human being. Their auto-response doesn't include a "You will receive a response within X business days", so I may wait until at least Monday. If it can't be resolved (because clearly, I am either a spy, ninja, or ghost), then I will look to other options (and redo the video sections that mention the campaign specifically). Thanks for staying interested; I'd hoped to have been able to say on Friday, "It's live!" That may not happen, though, and I am sorry for it.

Do you have a different video for the actual announcement? Nice fixes btw Lijj.

By "different video", do you mean the whole 12-minute promo video? The link is right above the loud credits image, or you can download it here: download (http://darkabstraction.com/kickstarter/video.avi) (~450mb).

--

Progress update. The verification hang-up has been averted (courtesy of their customer service), and the project was submitted for review at 6:45PM (EDT) today. Here's hoping it makes it through the approval process!

This is still related to the brainstorm that was going on here, so:

(http://i41.tinypic.com/23jga2t.jpg)

Updated Textbox V2. Now resized to fit the current screen size that's slightly bigger. Also, 3 sizes; helps alot, as demonstrated in the mock-up:

(http://i41.tinypic.com/2quu7tz.jpg)

I don't really want this on the video or implemented right away. It's more as an updated Tethical resource.

What do you think of my new Knight Lijj?

Cue everybody freaking out about the new chocobo sprite hiding in plain sight! Looks great.

Quote from: Mobius on September 07, 2013, 08:54:26 pmWhat do you think of my new Knight Lijj?

I love itt!!! The front view is multiply orgasmic.
Great refinement on that chocobo too; the feathers look great.
Edit: Maybe the boots could have dual tones like the ones I did on the back-view... It's subtle cause the cape obfuscates it a bit.
Anyhow I may want to try to translate my boot idea over from that back-view into your front.

Nice work Mobius, that chocobo is pretty freakin' awesome

Well I am surprised so much happened here. Great work on the Knight, Smash, looks far better than my Guardian, haha.

Chocobo is beyond amazing, that's what we needed in FFT, a good looking, huge Chocobo.

Lirmont, is there a way for you to upload the videos for Youtube or something? I tried downloading it, but looking at the size, I had to stop, since my bandwidth totally blows, and I would love to watch it and give some input.

Here you go: http://youtu.be/XrjzFce7XYY

Youtube squashed the 704x488 format, though. Font in the events section still looks badass.

Holyshit!! That some amazing work there, lirmont! I can't believe I'm missing this! And that is one badass chocobo, Mobius. Great job, everyone! Good luck, lirmont!

Thanks! Alright, it's live! Do me a solid and pass this link around: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/100316459/tethical-an-srpg-engine. If you feel like reading even more about the project (but from a more personal point of view), please check out this article: http://rootgamer.com/6690/crowd-funding/kickstarter-crowd-funding/tethical-srpg-engine-kickstarter-live.

Thanks again to everybody who has made this possible up to this point.