Final Fantasy Hacktics

I really really hope not.

I didn't start a FF7 project solely because this one already was being done

Cheetah's busy with grad courses.

Ok :-)

(Ah, I figured Cheetah was busy with something, but I feel slightly better now with that knowledge for a couple of reasons. Thanks.)

Well, with that now known, even though Cheetah is away, I figure I still might as well ask something.

While doing research on element(al)s for Embargo, I was reminded by the Final Fantasy Wikia's Element page that Final Fantasy VII has rather...atypical elements. It has the somewhat recurring Poison element and the almost-entirely exclusive Gravity element in place of Dark element and, barring Alexander & plot-only Holy, Holy element.

As such, I was wondering if for this project, if "we" "should" replace those two elements with Gravity and Poison or if we should just go with the regular eight Ivalician elements since it is Ivalice that the FFVII characters are working with. Despite raising this, I'm guessing it would be the latter, especially since Bio & Demi would still work even if non-elemental, as much fun as it might be to screw around with Poison element absorption and Poison status healing.

Still, something to potentially consider.

I wish I could help out with this project in some way, I'd really really like to see this patch go somewhere. The Damned has some good points, plus if there are more status ailments or helpful statuses in FF7, you can make some more by using the Dark/evil looking slot and replacing the wall status with something. I think most of the heroes sprites are more or less done thanks to Twinees awesome work, how is eventing going? I doubt making new battles and enemies is too tough, but eventing keeps popping into my head as something that probably would take a long time and is difficult...

(Not sure what I had good points about, especially since I'm not really sure we should change elements--though it could be interesting. Merely brought up as idle consideration. Thanks, though.)

I would have answered this earlier, but given all that I had to do this week, I've only really had spare time since last night, where I promptly fell asleep earlier after getting only like 5 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours.

Anyway, when it comes to statuses, due to all the research I have done and have been doing, I can say that replicating the ones that were FFVII specific wouldn't really be all that useful:


1. All Lucky 7s: Technically not an official status or even something that could be exactly replicated given that FFT's generics only have 3 digit spaces for HP (and MP), it deserves mention only for completeness's sake since it and Lucky Girl are two very different things. That said, in no way would "we" want to exactly replicate this anyway since it's pretty damn broken and, arguably, abusive despite the end of battle failsafe. Hitting anything in FFT even for "only" 777 damage repeatedly is a very quick to make said thing dead, even if done manually and not to the utter excess of 63 automatic hits per character.

2. Fury: Rather pointless without Limit Breaks (as they are in FFVII) seeing how its only effects beyond that are basically being a 30% Blind that affects magic(k)al as well as physical abilities.

3. Imprisoned: Only shows up on three occasions and it basically only functions like a version of Stop that can be dispelled by damage...which is what Sleep pretty much already is. If it gets referenced at all, then it should be plot/event-only, especially since if "we" want a removal status, then there exists Banish/X-Zone; that would be far more appropriate anyway given that it has precedence in Ivalice, if only due to Demon Wall's "Telega" spell. (Of course, whether or not it would be [easily] achievable, especially if "we" wanted it only affect one character and/or for that character to come back to battle, is an entirely separate matter.)

4. Lucky Girl: Possibly the most interesting thing to try to replicate even though in FF7 it was only available to Cait Sith by chance, it turns ALL physical hits into Critical hits. That might be problematic, however, for not only outpacing magic(k) in FFT even further as well as the fact that IIRC Knockback is rather intimately tied to Criticals in FFT. You'd probably have to make Knockback its own official status, which might have its own problems....

5. Mini: Not exclusive to FF7, so it shouldn't really be on this list I suppose. However, it deserves mention partly because it's one of the more...out there recurring statuses; also, it deserves mention, again, for completeness's sake. All of that so stated, it too is not worth copying, if only because it would be absolute hell on a spiriting level to make "mini" sprites of every class and non-boss character, including generic monsters. I suppose "we" could make a Mini status that "miniaturized" stats detrimentally, but it would like be much closer to FFV's Old status, so....

6. Sadness: Much like Fury, this would be rather pointless to replicate without Limit Breaks, only even more so since its reduction to physical and magic(k)al damage is essentially already replicated by the combination of Protect and Shell that is already the White Magic(k) spell "Wall".

7. Sap: This isn't a status exclusive to FFVII. In fact I just now had to double check that this even shows up FFVII and it does, but only against Bottomswell and only in junction with that boss's version of Imprisoned to simulate drowning. Ignoring its poor representation in FFVII, it still probably won't really work in there's not ATB. Additionally, there's the problem of the game apparently only checking for one end of turn damage (or heal) or so I've been told. I mean, thinking about it now (since I've been wondering whether to try to include Sap in Embargo for a while), I guess one could make it so that damage was done at the end of every other character's turn or even the literally of every clocktick that wasn't the Sapped character's turn, but those present their own problems....

8. "Slow-Numb": Also called Gradual Petrify or Slow Petrify, much like Mini and Sap, it is not exclusive. Unlike Mini and Sap, I would heartily endorse trying to replicate this status. In fact, it's only status on this list that I would be comfortable with replicating for a...variety of reasons that I won't get into just yet, partly because I need to confirm something still.


That said, while Cheetah is away, perhaps "we" start thinking about how to translate abilities in general? I'm still not sure about how "we"'re representing Materia in a game with actual "classes", especially I assume that "we"'re keeping around at least some generic Ivalician enemies, but...yeah. "We" should do something while Cheetah is busy.

Quote from: The Damned on April 27, 2012, 07:23:40 pm
"We" should do something while Cheetah is busy.

While I'm not officially part of any team for this project I could definitely make the opening event if someone could set in stone the details of it.

(Yes, I live. Unfortunately.

A bit late to respond to this, but I've been working on Embargo and other things in addition to not having been on FFH in the past three weeks.

Quote from: Elric on June 02, 2012, 07:53:35 pm
While I'm not officially part of any team for this project I could definitely make the opening event if someone could set in stone the details of it.

I'm not entirely certain, especially given Cheetah's current continued absence, but I was under impression that the whole Barret & Cid scene with Mustadio's father was the opening scene/event or, at least, very near to it.

Either way, you could maybe try eventing that since sprites all people in that scene exist and that's the only substantial--in this thread at least--so far. Up to you, though.

(Randomly checks on FFH)

Elric: Your event edits have been looking amazing and from your Pokemon event it even looks like you are implementing some choice conditionals. If you want to put this even together that would be great. The last version of the event script is good to go, and there will likely only be some small text edits done in the future.

I am by no means ready to start putting much of my time into this project. But it would be great to see more work getting done slowly and building interest in the project.

Quote from: Cheetah on June 23, 2012, 02:22:05 pm
(Randomly checks on FFH)

Elric: Your event edits have been looking amazing and from your Pokemon event it even looks like you are implementing some choice conditionals. If you want to put this even together that would be great. The last version of the event script is good to go, and there will likely only be some small text edits done in the future.

I am by no means ready to start putting much of my time into this project. But it would be great to see more work getting done slowly and building interest in the project.

I thank you for the compliment Cheetah  Tho i must thank Pride for making the conditions, I just made the events for them, but yea it turned out pretty well.
I will definitely take up the challenge of doing this first event for this mod It is something that has interested me for some time now.

I look forward to what you can come up with Elric, good luck.

Thanx Cheetah, looking at the script the scene should be pretty straight forward to make, I will probably do it this weekend, since I will have a bit of extra time.

Plus I already own a Besrodio sprite, so I won't even have to use EVTCHR \o/

NECROBUMP!!

If anyone is still interested in this mod, I did end up making the first event today. Though we did change the dialogue a bit, the general idea
remains the same. This map is not fun to work with when you have a giant spinning globe in the middle, so it'll likely need some tweaking.

I would like to continue working on this mod, but I am not a writer. If someone would like to discuss the next scene and general flow
of this mod, that would great.

As always, awesome event! I <3 this mod

For the next time, make the text scroll a bit slower, or wait a bit more before skipping, ok?
I had trouble reading, and I usually read very fast...

That was great as usual, but isn't FFT's world map rotated 90 degrees to the left? That's why the Order of the Northern Sky is at Igros, and the order of the Southern Sky is all the way on the other end? Technically Goug would be west of Dorter, so they would be traveling east.

At least... I think that's how it is...

Anyway great job!

Well this is FFH for you. A year after a final script was produced and life got busy; an amazing event magically appears. This is really great work Elric! The subtle character movements, the punch, and the item appearing all looks spot on. My only critic would be that the map is very hard to get good viewing angles of and some of your great evtchrs are covered-up by the movement of the machine. I have two hopefully easy solutions.

1) The easy fix that might not look good in the long run. Just change the camera angle so it is at a higher viewing angle. Either for the whole seen, or maybe just for the punch.
2) Slightly more complicated. After Cid gets up from kneeling in front of the machine, have him walk one tile to the right. This way when Barret walks up he will stand where Cid was before, and we will be able to see both of them better. You could also move Besrodio directly  up one block, so he is higher up and easier to see.

I will give those ideas a shot today Cheetah, there is a couple other things I noticed in
the event that I'm not quite happy with yet, so I'll post an updated version either today or tomorrow.

And thank you everyone for your comments, Dome, I will try to record more slowly next time, my apologies.
When you've tested and seen the event 100 times, it's hard to remember to slow down on the dialogue.

Now, I've skimmed through the rest of this thread, since it had been a loong time since I'd done so.

I noticed a big worry for this was finding a event editor.

Quote from: GeneralStrife on September 02, 2011, 06:18:45 pm
Yeah, finding someone willing to spend loads of time on events will be one of if not the main parts of this.

Quote from: Pride on September 12, 2011, 10:39:51 pm
I'm still willing to help/do with events, I'm just waiting to see who (if anyone) will take the lead.

Quote from: Kokojo on September 01, 2011, 07:51:11 pm
I unfortunately don't think you will find any event editor crazy enought to help you in your quest.

I will obviously be taking the lead on this event wise, and would accept any help offered, I can teach anyone to event, as
long as they can make the practice event in my eventing tutorial first to show they are able to follow directions.

RavenOfRazgriz would be setting up the game mechanics, but since nothing has been set in stone, we could use some
feedback and ideas on this.

I know ASMs were another concern, but if that becomes a problem, I'm sure we can get that figured out with the right people.

What I really would like to know is what kind of story are we looking at here, given that I completely agree with Cheetah's statement here:

Quote from: Cheetah on September 02, 2011, 01:15:57 pm
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm really tired of playing through the standard, or even slightly altered progression of FFT. Even a simple story with few events becomes very difficult when it comes to reordering progression (something no patch has done yet)

And that we now do have everything we need for custom story progression, as my own and several other in progress mods use this,
how should the story/flow go for this game? I've seen quite a few ideas here for this, but most do not go with the flow of
having Barret and Cid be the only 2 from FF7 in the first scene, unless I missed something.

I'm also not a writer, and have much work to do for Chapter 2 of Jot5, but events like this are not hard to throw together
(I think that first one took me about 3-4 hours). I'm more then happy to throw around ideas, since I consider myself quite knowledgeable on
FF7. but when it comes to actually writing a cohesive story, this is not something I can do on my own.

Once upon a time I had the first section of the game all planned out with getting the main cast together. I tried to order things in terms of what order the sprites would be done. Caitsith being last. I will clue you in Elric as soon as I find my old notes and we can think of a game plan to present to everyone else.

It will make it difficult now that Cait Sith hasn't been finished (nor Twiness versions of Aerith or Yuffie IIRC) but,
I did recieve the e-mail and I'm gonna have Raven read it once we finish some house chores. Between myself, Raven and
fdc, we have come up with some stuff storyline wise as well. So it'll be interesting to see how we get everything to meld
together.

None the less, this will (i hope) be an exciting project to work on, after all we did for Jot5 Ch1 it's very nice to work on something
else for a bit, even if I am working on both of them at the same time.

More to come shortly!

Okay, I just finished reading through the notes Cheetah sent Elric, and while not everything is compatible with the flow Elric, FDC, and I decided on going with quite a bit is so you guys can totally expect to see some of that.  Some things will be... kind of sort of very different as well, though.  I think everyone will be able to enjoy it, though.

For the sake of scaling back and getting things done in a timely manner, the gameplay won't involve the insane amounts of hacking Pokeytax originally wanted to do since a project of this scale doesn't honestly call for it, but there will be a unique Job system different from Vanilla FFT in some ways.  The gameplay work will be 'fast and loose', with everything returning from FFT working exactly as it did in FFT (for better or worse), to better give the feel of "FFVII in Ivalice".  We decided to take a Call of Power route with things and eschew the World Map in favor of a grind-free system, so people can focus on the story and the gameplay and just have fun with everything, as this is meant to be a smaller project.

I won't say much about the plot as we've decided to work with it, but I will note we do have a basic idea of everything that will happen (including the story's resolution) and some of the key plot points and locations along the way, and how this will intersect with Ramza's own journey without contradicting any of the events already laid out in FFT.  What we have in mind plays well off some of the more important plot points from FFVII most people tend to overlook because of all the ZOMG AERIS DIED hype and many of the FFVII-references tied into Ivalice, so fans of FFVII's plot will be pleased.  That's about all I can say on the matter, other than the fact the game will have two distinct "Acts" and be roughly as long as the first two Chapters of Call of Power the way we currently have it in our heads.  This is obviously subject to change but should give people a rough idea of what we intend to do.

This will definitely be a smaller project Elric and I will be working on in-between Journey of the Five - Chapter 2 and obviously has no ETA, but we have a good idea of how to do everything we need to do so as long as we're able to dedicate the time to it we can definitely produce something fun and enjoyable for everyone.