Final Fantasy Hacktics

Projects => New Project Ideas => Topic started by: Timbo on June 15, 2016, 08:52:49 pm

Title: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 15, 2016, 08:52:49 pm
So, my love affair with WotL has officially ended. The Onion Knight is boring and either utterly worthless, or totally broken. The Dark Knight is broken and nearly inaccessible. The new story battles are uninteresting and easy. The new equipment while nearly impossible to get only serves to further break the game. The sound quality is terrible and the graphical slowdown, until it was corrected by a member this community made the game unplayable. The only features that are worth a damn are the expanded roster size, the cut scenes, and the translation which divides the fan base in half on a love it or hate it basis. Ultimately the good, does not outweigh bad. So, I'm officially reversing my stance, The PSX version is the superior version and I'm sorry it took me so long to come around.

Over the years I've made several patches but I've never actually released any of them. The early ones were either unbalanced or suffered from quality issues and buggy, unpolished, mechanics. The later ones made so many compromises that they were utterly forgettable. Finally, my most recent patch while being excellent in terms of quality and balance suffers from being on the wrong platform and is therefore lagging behind in terms of innovation.

I popped back in here out of boredom the other day and like always, I was blown away at the innovative progress that the community here has created in the time that I've been gone. After wandering into the Completed Projects section, I noticed something, outside of Completed, there isn't a vanilla patch in the child boards anymore.

So I started thinking, "Maybe I that's something I could contribute?" Then naturally, I realized that this patch would have to compete with KO in terms of scope and function as well as add some quantifiable innovation, and then when I remembered a suggestion Toshiko made a long time ago: Use a different script.


My design goals are as follows:



Why am I posting this so early in the development cycle? The short answer is that since I actually want this mod to be played, I need feedback from the community I'm making it for. I'll maintain an updated list of questions in this post comprised of the questions I've asked throughout the life of this thread.


List of Questions for community feedback:

Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Angel on June 15, 2016, 09:09:41 pm
*Hallelujah chorus*

*Tears of joy are shed for another PSX convert*
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: 3lric on June 15, 2016, 09:11:16 pm
So I'm assuming it was you who accidentally removed and them immediately replaced ~100 files from the FFT:Complete Dropbox the other day? :P
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 15, 2016, 09:13:22 pm
Lol. That was not me this time. I unsubscribed from it the proper way months ago, just to be safe.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Pride on June 15, 2016, 09:24:47 pm
Yayyy psx masterrace
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Jumza on June 15, 2016, 10:56:47 pm
psx > psp

Quote from: Jack of All Trades on June 15, 2016, 08:52:49 pm
List of Questions for community feedback:

  • What do you think are the original game's missed opportunities?

  • Out of all of the innovative features created by the community here, which would you like to see implemented?

  • What would you like to see changed or eliminated?

  • Since Plus and 1.X are taken, what should I name this patch

  • How do you feel about the Magic Guns are they worth keeping?





1. I'll only name a few but there are many, keep that in mind
- The enemies only ever get access to a few jobs. I suggest spicing it up, make it more interesting. I don't want to fight only Knights and Archers in chapter 3 I want to fight Ninjas and Samurai and Dancers and Bards and Mediators!
- More sidequests, specifically in chapters 1/2/3. I liked the sidequests in chapter 4 and I get why they're there, but there is still room for more.

2. I kind of want to say all of them. The more the merrier? :P

3. Lot's of things, see above I guess.

4. FFT: PSP where PSP is some fun acronym :P Just to make it ironic.

5. I quite like them actually.

Hope that helps :P
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Emmy on June 15, 2016, 11:23:31 pm
By new script, do you mean new story?  That by definition makes it not a vanilla mod.  But that's OK. :)  I'm more interested in something that strays away from vanilla scope.

Answers for your questions:

1.  I think the biggest missed opportunity in vanilla is the lack of variety in encounters.  They made lots of interesting classes that see little/no use out of the ai.  Why are we still fighting archers and knights in ch 4?  The other biggest missed opportunity is making use of the arena style functionality (enemies that are enemies with each other as well as you).  If they used that at all, it would partially solve the other issue I mentioned.

2.  Don't limit yourself to just one hack people have made.  To give you an idea, my mod uses over 90 separate ASM hacks (and counting, since I'm looking for ways to use space/abilities/etc that I'm currently not using to practice learning ASM and to make the game more interesting).  Just make sure that whatever you use doesn't conflict with each other.

3.  Without knowing what your scope is, it's hard to answer this question.  Since you mentioned balance, one of the biggest balance issues in vanilla is charge time of spells vs. how much speed is attainable by characters.  I've fixed this in my mod with a hack that freezes speed growth and limiting the amount of speed granting items that the player has access to, along with fixing ct of spells such that everything is worth the action to cast.  Another approach, if you'd like to keep speed growth/items, is to use the hack that modifies CT (Actual CT of spell = CT in patcher - MA iirc).

4.  Don't settle on a name until you have a better defined scope for it.  If you're changing story, you might want a name that implies a whole new game altogether.

5.  Depends what your focus is.  I think the vanilla style ones are somewhat redundant with each other, but if you emphasize enemy absorb/null/weak elements they could be better.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: 3lric on June 15, 2016, 11:42:33 pm
I agree with Emmy and Disagree with Jumza about the name.

FFT: PSP sounds weird, it also clashes with both TLW (which actually IS FFT PSP to PSX) and FFT: Complete
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 16, 2016, 12:34:31 am
Quote from: Emmy on June 15, 2016, 11:23:31 pm
By new script, do you mean new story?  That by definition makes it not a vanilla mod.  But that's OK. :)  I'm more interested in something that strays away from vanilla scope.

Answers for your questions:

1.  I think the biggest missed opportunity in vanilla is the lack of variety in encounters.  They made lots of interesting classes that see little/no use out of the ai.  Why are we still fighting archers and knights in ch 4?  The other biggest missed opportunity is making use of the arena style functionality (enemies that are enemies with each other as well as you).  If they used that at all, it would partially solve the other issue I mentioned.

2.  Don't limit yourself to just one hack people have made.  To give you an idea, my mod uses over 90 separate ASM hacks (and counting, since I'm looking for ways to use space/abilities/etc that I'm currently not using to practice learning ASM and to make the game more interesting).  Just make sure that whatever you use doesn't conflict with each other.

3.  Without knowing what your scope is, it's hard to answer this question.  Since you mentioned balance, one of the biggest balance issues in vanilla is charge time of spells vs. how much speed is attainable by characters.  I've fixed this in my mod with a hack that freezes speed growth and limiting the amount of speed granting items that the player has access to, along with fixing ct of spells such that everything is worth the action to cast.  Another approach, if you'd like to keep speed growth/items, is to use the hack that modifies CT (Actual CT of spell = CT in patcher - MA iirc).

4.  Don't settle on a name until you have a better defined scope for it.  If you're changing story, you might want a name that implies a whole new game altogether.

5.  Depends what your focus is.  I think the vanilla style ones are somewhat redundant with each other, but if you emphasize enemy absorb/null/weak elements they could be better.


When I say script, I mean only the narration, dialogue, action, etc; Much in the way WotL updates the original script. However, I'll be using an alternate translation wholly different from WotL. So yes, this game will truly be vanilla. As far events go, I only have one very minor change planned.

With regards to the other suggestions, I've heard so far. I will be diversifying the opponents as the game progresses. I will be using lots and lots of ASM hacks. I will be using Rebirth's speed balancing approach. The main focus of this patch is to provide a better entry point to new players by improving the derpy translation and to reward fans by providing them with an updated, innovative, version of the game they know and love.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Jumza on June 16, 2016, 08:47:12 am
The name suggestions was mostly a joke on his switching from PSP to PSX :P
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Guru on June 16, 2016, 12:15:09 pm
Quote
List of Questions for community feedback:
1.What do you think are the original game's missed opportunities?
2.Out of all of the innovative features created by the community here, which would you like to see implemented?
3.What would you like to see changed or eliminated?
4.Since Plus and 1.X are taken, what should I name this patch
5.How do you feel about the Magic Guns are they worth keeping?


So much to be improved, both in WOTL and Vanilla. Honestly the reason I never got into WOTL was that it was just as broken as vanilla. I'll get more into that later, but the other reason I didn't like WOTL was the translation. As you said some people love it, some hate it, but all I remember is how horrible Delita sounded in WOTL. I did enjoy the extra side quests though, it went further into the story a bit, gave insight on characters we know almost nothing about, like reis and Beowulf(only 2 I can remember besides extra delita battle), and hell who doesn't like extra content/battles? SO anyways...

1. Moar side quests/optional battles! Plenty of room, JOT5 has over 100(?) battles between marks, side battles and story battles. Throw the extra aliste battles in, make some cool new optional battles and whatever else you can think of. I always hated the fact that only generics could do propositions and some of the propositions seemed like they would make awesome side quests too.

    Another thing that would be cool but might be hard to incorporate, I forget who mentioned this though, but it would be really cool to have the treasures have an actual purpose. Whether in synth, unlocking content or having some kind of effect on the game itself(like materia could add a slight boost to MA or something along those lines). I also liked the idea of the novels.

2. I agree with jumza on this one, anything you can fit in there! Lol figure out what you want and work around that so you don't have conflicts. I haven't got far into modding anything myself, but I try to keep up with the most of the stuff on here. ARH2, synth, soldier office, and fury hack are some cool ones but there is a TON of stuff on here. Emmy does a lot of stuff to improve monsters too.

3. BALANCE. It's ok to have OP characters, some people actually like having broken orlandu(I do not). Overall that should be a choice though and otherwise balance is something that all versions of FFT lack. Certain classes just completely outweigh others, it's tough, but this can really be done later on after you have released a beta and have multiple input from your players. I mean if you look at a game like diablo, they are constantly creating new patches in order to improve balance.

    I also agree with emmy on spell casting( and emmy knows much more than me so  :mrgreen: ) adjusting speed itself would also greatly improve the balance issues above too, because in any tactics game speed is everything.

    I'd love to see some improvement in the random battles. Souls of Destiny(Conman's FFT mod) even has quite a few unique characters encountered randomly, which made for some interesting battles.

    Get rid of clouds materia blade requirement, or make it a better weapon. I'd also like to see him not join at level 1.

    Personally, I liked the magic guns. They used a different formula than the regular guns which was essentially a new weapon type in itself.

    Could always add the WOTL classes, or just add some new classes. Maybe a few characters unlocked through some side quests?

    I'm sure there is a ton more, and some of these might not be what your looking for, but I figure more input never hurts  ;)






   

Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 16, 2016, 07:58:29 pm
My event editing skills are mostly non existent. So for now, I won't be adding side quests. I'm only updating the text. I'm considering making a small change that shouldn't be too hard to learn, but only if I can do so in a way that doesn't harm the story. If I can pull it off it'll be awesome.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Xifanie on June 16, 2016, 08:06:16 pm
Yay! Another vanilla mod! We really needed that.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 16, 2016, 08:33:02 pm
Quote from: Xifanie on June 16, 2016, 08:06:16 pm
Yay! Another vanilla mod! We really needed that.

Based on the number of negative interactions we've had over the years, I feel like it's a safe bet that you're trolling me. Don't you realize that bullying makes you look bad? As the head of this community a poor reflection on you hurts everyone and drives people away.

Furthermore sarcasm doesn't work with text. It requires tone of voice, body language, or an emoji at the very least. That said, if I'm wrong I'll gladly apologize for misinterpreting your intent, because there is nothing I'd like more than for our petty squabbling to end and eventually be replaced by a genuine friendship.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Jumza on June 16, 2016, 08:59:40 pm
That aside, I implore you to try and learn eventing when you're ready to take your mod to the next level. It's not as hard as you think, and you don't have to do it until you make significant progress otherwise if you don't want to, but it will really make any mod 1000% more attractive for prospective players.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Xifanie on June 16, 2016, 09:16:56 pm
You made topic for a new project that has no baseline, asking for people's opinions on just creating something "new". I'm sorry, but your goals are extremely vague and it's like you're asking how to make a sandwich. There are infinite ways to make a sandwich. If you asked how to make a good smoked meat sandwich, you might get ideas related to that. Otherwise you'll end up with a banana bread sandwich with bleu cheese, mint, bacon, truffles, ketchup and olives.

There's a good reason someone wrote that thing at the top of the forum: "Don't be hasty to start your own mod; all our FFT modding projects are greatly understaffed. Find out how you can help in the Recruitment section."

I don't know if your vanilla mod will be innovative or not, but I know you haven't really shown a desire to create new events. Emmy's mod is a vanilla mod, but it's innovative. So, what will your mod bring out that's new and refreshing? You don't even know. You expect people to toss ideas for you all over the place, reject 99% of them (unless you really want to end up with the aforementioned sandwich) and in the end? It's your call. We don't have a clue what the end product will be.

Quote from: Jumza on June 16, 2016, 08:59:40 pm
That aside, I implore you to try and learn eventing when you're ready to take your mod to the next level. It's not as hard as you think, and you don't have to do it until you make significant progress otherwise if you don't want to, but it will really make any mod 1000% more attractive for prospective players.

Actually, if you're going to event for your mod... it's the first time you need to learn and apply yourself at. It's what builds hype for a mod. It's what shows you're willing to do something else than type numbers in boxes. If you don't start with it, you'll just give up on it after you're done with FFTP because it's harder than FFTP.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 16, 2016, 09:27:11 pm
This is an elementary attempt at learning how to make events. However, I'm not going to plan a whole game around event editing before leaning the basics. I don't like wasted effort. Editing the script and existing stuff comes first. Once that's done I plan to modify a few existing events in small ways to set up one or two new side events in chapter 3 or 4 depending on whether I have to move everything around to do so. Nothing grandiose.

However, once TLW is out, I'll probably merge my patch with it and start adding in more substantial side quests and such since that patch will fully restructure the game's events and set me up for success. Again, since the plan is to improve the existing game, I'd rather create incremental changes over time.

Furthermore, I know exactly what I plan to do. However, it would probably be best to get some basic information people's likes and dislikes about the game before i waste all of my effort going in the wrong direction. Just let me be clear, this isn't the announce my project thread. I probably won't do that until it's complete.

The big idea here is adding a new, not WotL, translation that won't divide the community. All the other stuff is secondary.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Emmy on June 16, 2016, 10:07:19 pm
If you're wanting to change that, you'll still need to learn basics of eventing because every place where people talk requires new text.  Adding new side quests would also require learning eventing.

If you're asking about the kind of direction to go in with the game, my main focus has always been on the battle designs.  (Mostly patcher stuff, unless you need new asm to accomplish stuff that you can't with vanilla formulas/abilities).  I think it might be interesting to see a battle focused design that goes in a completely different direction than I did but isn't "vanilla but hard" (such as by using the ARH).  I've completely revamped items in my mod (and allowed full item access), and several players have mentioned that they think it would be interesting to see my items in a more human focused mod.  I've thought of some things like enemies with innate status immunities and items that block their weaknesses that the players can steal/break off them, or enemies that gain access to abilities via item and have different abilities to use if the item is gone; but maybe a bigger focus on this type of design than what would fit thematically in my mod might be interesting in another.  That and arena style battles. :P

As for the text, honestly I've seen the vanilla text enough to not really have an opinion on what you do with it. Feel free to rewrite the story entirely if you want.  To me, that should be secondary to gameplay and not the other way around.  Especially if you're not wanting to do much with eventing.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 16, 2016, 11:41:47 pm
Quote from: Emmy on June 16, 2016, 10:07:19 pm
If you're wanting to change that, you'll still need to learn basics of eventing because every place where people talk requires new text.  Adding new side quests would also require learning eventing.


I am fully aware that this is event editing at it's most basic level. This is precisely why I'm doing it. I've made good patches before, but I've never made a great patch. I can't find time to take on a massive project and dedicate countless hours of my life to this. That time doesn't belong to me, it belongs to my children. I can however, take on smaller more incremental projects with smaller learning curves like the one I'm doing that add to my slowly growing list of skills.

I don't like to practice just for the sake of practice. If I'm going to dedicate a large block of my time, I need something to show for it. A translation patch is just that, it's a beginning primer to event editing that has actual value. Adding a little bit more to it will actually force me to spread my wings a bit and when that's done, I'll have a much better concept of what you can do with event editing and how much planning it would take to do bigger and bigger projects. Ideally, I would continue to expand upon this patch but that's too far down the road for me to plan.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Xifanie on June 17, 2016, 10:19:27 am
Quote from: Emmy on June 16, 2016, 10:07:19 pmAs for the text, honestly I've seen the vanilla text enough to not really have an opinion on what you do with it. Feel free to rewrite the story entirely if you want.  To me, that should be secondary to gameplay and not the other way around.  Especially if you're not wanting to do much with eventing.


I don't know, if it weren't for the story, I wouldn't give a damn about FFT. Look at Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, awesome game, SRPG as well, but the battle system is minimal and the battles are easy. Why would I care? The story is awesome and cute and emotional. So I really have to strongly disagree on the whole "gameplay comes before story".
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Jumza on June 17, 2016, 11:24:43 am
I think that comes down to personal preference though. Story Patches vs Gameplay Patches (and the awesome ones that combine those elements) are just for different players.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Angel on June 17, 2016, 11:36:47 am
Some people like to enjoy good food, others just shovel McDonald's down and say their hunger is gone.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: CONMAN on June 17, 2016, 01:03:29 pm
Hey Jack of All Trades, I thought I would give you my $0.02 on your potential project.

First off, are you doing this for yourself , or as something of a service to the fft community?  For starters, you need to be doing this for yourself- or YOU WILL NEVER FINISH.... I've been working on my own mod for 4-5 years! I'm doing it for me- and sharing it with the community that made it possible.  People could tell me it sucks all day- and I would still work on it.  I know this sounds selfish, but are you going to put 5-10 hours a week on something you aren't crazy about to make others happy?  How many projects have started and then completely been abandoned!  I don't mean just the hundred or so ideas that never get off the ground, but the dozen others that really had promise and then never got completed.

As for a new vanilla mod, I think virtually all desire for such has evaporated over the years.  Without looking, I feel like 10 or so have been completed... Like has already been stated, unless you are going to throw out something really innovative, it's not going to serve any one.

I absolutely used to love seeing new project ideas pop up- It's so much fun to imagine all the possibilities.  I really don't any more and it's all because the completion rate for any non-vanilla mod is like 1%.  I beg of you- don't start unless you think you can finish.
I believe we have an estimated time/work post/spreadsheet or something to let you know how involved this is.  I have never looked at it, but let me give you rough timeline of how my own mod project has progressed:

*about one year of just surfing this site- learning simple patcher, spriting, basic junk I slowly applied to my own patch.

*Decided to make my own story mod- reusing most my original patcher changes and made a basic 1 chapter beta with light attackout and battle conditional changes and relatively week eventing skills- (heavily mirroring vanilla) about 8 months to a year.

*Slowly got better with eventing, conditionals, and started to properly use the world map editor to finish chapter 2 (and fix various issues in chapter 1) about 1 to 1 and a half years.

*Learning about event compression, improving attackout, world map, eventing. creating 5 side quests and nearly finishing a (from scratch) 3rd chapter with full world map editing/conditional changes- close to a one and a half years

For a perspective I have a wife and 2 kids (not trying to create a free time competition) and have worked on this mod 5 to 10 hours a week(sometimes a lot sometimes not for weeks).  THIS IS MY NUMBER 1 HOBBY!  I expect to finish an entire game mod in about 2 years.

I don't know you want to do, but 1st do it for yourself, and 2nd decide how much you want to put into it before you start.

EDIT: For perspective, a good chunk of my time is also spriting and I'm a slow typer.  You could totally progress faster than I have-and over the years new tools keep speeding up the process.  I have long loved the idea of someone simply shooting for an original one chapter mod- I think it is roughly the perfect amount of work/payoff one could hope for.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Timbo on June 17, 2016, 02:29:33 pm
Quote from: Xifanie on June 17, 2016, 10:19:27 am
I don't know, if it weren't for the story, I wouldn't give a damn about FFT. Look at Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, awesome game, SRPG as well, but the battle system is minimal and the battles are easy. Why would I care? The story is awesome and cute and emotional. So I really have to strongly disagree on the whole "gameplay comes before story".
This.
Title: Re: My love affair with WotL has ended... It's time for something new.
Post by: Guru on June 17, 2016, 04:38:52 pm
Hey gotta start somewhere, but I do agree that eventing would add a lot of possibilities to your mod. I also think it's better to start somewhere and improve as you go. With the tools here it's basically just a list of commands when you break it down. Of course it's one of those things that's very easy to learn, and hard to master(or maybe impossible to master  ;)). There's a very easy to follow tutorial and a list of commands on the wiki(with very thorough descriptions). Only thing with the tutorial is it's done with the old instructions, but with the wiki content it's a very easy transition. I've done 3 small events myself, and multiple sessions of messing around and trying out different commands. I've done some attackout editing too(Raven did an awesome tutorial on this), and the way I see it, if I can do it, anybody can  :mrgreen:. Check out stones ripple or even the first scene of JOT5 to see how much eventing can really improve a game. I still love that scene with the archer shooting the gate lever in stones ripple, and was probably not hard to do at all.

Also, don't take criticism to heart. I still remember xif commenting on my first couple events lol. It was something along the lines of "Wow you did a very basic event" then followed some harsh criticism. I got just as much useful information from her criticism as I did from the advice I got from the Event Guru himself(Elric). She has a point and all the comments so far have just been random things that we think would be cool to see in a mod. Just from her comment and your response, we now have a better idea of what your aiming for, and you can now narrow down your questions to be more specific.

Quote from: Xifanie on June 17, 2016, 10:19:27 am
I don't know, if it weren't for the story, I wouldn't give a damn about FFT. Look at Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, awesome game, SRPG as well, but the battle system is minimal and the battles are easy. Why would I care? The story is awesome and cute and emotional. So I really have to strongly disagree on the whole "gameplay comes before story".


Eh I have to agree and disagree with both these, I think a lot of it comes down to opinion. I personally prefer gameplay over story, but without a good story the game becomes very irritating, trying to rush past every single scene(This is how lightning returns was for me). I still played it multiple times, even though I hated the story because I enjoyed the unique gameplay.

Now the same can be said of a good story. I often play older games, which the gameplay is just easy and outdated now, because I love the stories. But then it's back in the box for a few years. I fell in love with FFT because of the story, but the reason I'm so bored with it now is there is no challenge anymore.

When it comes down to it the games I play multiple times are the ones that will provide me with a challenge. Call of duty zombies is still one of my favorite games. There is no story really and no matter how good you are you're gonna lose at some point. All you can do is try to get further than you did last time lol.

In the end it's gameplay over story for me too, but a truly awesome game combines both.