Journey of the Five FAQ + Q/A.

[brittmarv]

I wanted to be able to beat Bariaus Hill North without it being nerfed, though I suppose that me recording getting my ass kicked there (again) wasn't for naught given the interesting things I cataloged for completeness's sake; those should all be fixed by now and if they aren't, well then you'll see Sunday I guess.

I managed to beat that one early on with some lucky "Finishing Touch"es from Cloud. I highly recommend that ability. It is sort of a crapshoot  but man is it satisfying when you can target multiple mobs with it.




Question

Is the "9 Sprite Limit" (mentioned before a few times) only for extra sprites? As in, completely new data added ( rather than just edits of existing sprites )

How does the equipment list compare to the vanilla equipment list?

and finally, at what point in the storyline am I going to want to start using Move-Find Item? Is it worth bothering with early on?

Thanks!

[RavenOfRazgriz]

9 Sprite Limit means that any scene can only have 9 unique Sprites loaded in RAM at a time.  This is why during battle you only ever see the enemy with 4 different Jobs instead of 5 or more like the player uses unless there are monsters involved.

The equipment list is completely redone.  There are some "returning" pieces of equipment as you've probably noticed in Chapter 1 but all the values are different, and of course there are new items later on once you've moved beyond basic gear.

You can always use Move-Find Item to get items better than you currently own as long as its your first time visiting that map.  Every Move-Find Item is a 100% find and either equal to or better than anything you can buy at the time of you visiting that map for the very first time.

[brittmarv]

You can always use Move-Find Item to get items better than you currently own as long as its your first time visiting that map.  Every Move-Find Item is a 100% find and either equal to or better than anything you can buy at the time of you visiting that map for the very first time.

This is going to sound sort of dumb.. but..

The first time you visit a map, do you find the better rare item with Move-FindItem or was I reading that wrong?

If I read it wrong - are there still a common and a rare item or is it just one single item with a 100 % success rate?

[sellat]

I am a bit curious... i came to know jot5 recently... and just devoured it in one day... can't avoid replaying it, a question poped up in mind though... how much time this team spent on the production? oh! and i can't leave without thanking you all, you all deserve praising for this hard work! Congratulations!

[RavenOfRazgriz]

The original Journey of the Five concept was posted by Elric @ October 11th 2011.  The release for Chapter 1 was March 29th 2013.  So you're looking at almost a year and a half.  However, that number's a bit misleading because there was a lot of re-development, downtimes, etc., and a lot of framework for the other 3 Chapters was also being decided upon.  It was definitely a lot of time and effort on everyone's parts regardless, though.  A lot of polish went into everything and no one on the team really had an 'easy' Job, which is why things took as long as they did.

The good news is that Chapter 2 is in the Design stages now.  (This would be things such as script finalization, figuring out sidequests, etc.)  I can't say exactly when it'll enter Development stages (where we actually start putting things on the disk) but it should have a much shorter Development Cycle than Chapter 1 did.  So you can expect your Chapter 2 fix to come much faster than Chapter 1 did once we're happy with our Chapter 2 design and push it into development.

[The Damned]

(In trying to get an actual winning recording of Sweegy Woods still, I'm tempted to ask: Why the hell are Dragons such [powerful] bastards?)

What I really want to ask is something I could have sworn I had asked already though:


"Why was the name of Seymour chosen as Ramza's pseudonym?"


I'm pretty sure I can guess, but I just want to see what the official answer is.

[Kagebunji]

To be honest, higher tier monsters need to be tougher. I always missed that in FFT, since in original Final Fntasy games, if you encountered a Malboro, a Dragon, a Behemoth, you could either expect a game over screen if unprepared, or a really tough battle. Thus I fully support bastard Dragons, though I agree they appear kinda fast, heh.

[The Damned]

(This isn't the really the place to get into this, but....)

Oh, I'd be fine that.

I was talking, however, about the starting Dragons as they first appear at Sweegy Woods where you have two Guests that are potentially very useless against them. It's like an absurd difficulty spike, especially given the fight that comes immediately after it (and even before it); I am sure my level is part of it, but dear Hercules, why.

Anyway...might as well ask another question:


1. Given that there isn't any permanent (?) Brave and Faith alteration, where motivated the decision to have Mediator no longer be a generic class? (At least, I'm relatively sure it isn't anymore even though I haven't opened everything since Bandit basically is Mediator.)

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Mediator was removed and replaced with a different class because Mediator is kind of boring and in a lot of ways a rehash of Oracle and Thief, at least conceptually.  This is why most of the Mediator skills that weren't outright removed were placed in the hands of either the Rogue or the unique Bandit classes.  Both Rogue and Bandit have more to them than just Mediator skills, though.

Dragons are tough as nails because fuck you they're Dragons.

[The Damned]

(I could have sworn I asked something else, but perhaps Raven's response broke my heart thoroughly enough.)

Whatever the case may be, while waiting for Elric to answer the Seymour thing still, I figure I might as well ask this before I go walk my daily 8-ish miles. Otherwise I'll forget since I need to finally get up video descriptions for 6 videos when I come back before talking to someone for...a while.

Regardless, I'll ask two questions here; one that I keep forgetting to ask:


1. When it comes to the original side-characters, how were Bartholume, Leesha & Olivander conceived? I suppose I should ask the same of Tesnya & Romar even though I already kinda did.

2. What is the max level of this game? 50? 99? ...49? If it's still 99, then how did you come to a consensus to keep it at 99 given I know at least Raven has considered capping at least theoretical patches of his at Level 50 to keep the balance?


That's it (for now). Thanks.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

There's nothing terribly complex on how most of the characters were conceived.  Many were conceived bottom-up to fill a gap in the story.  I don't think there are any particularly grandiose stories to tell about the OCs though at this time.

The Level cap is 99.

[3lric]

(In trying to get an actual winning recording of Sweegy Woods still, I'm tempted to ask: Why the hell are Dragons such [powerful] bastards?)

What I really want to ask is something I could have sworn I had asked already though:


"Why was the name of Seymour chosen as Ramza's pseudonym?"


I'm pretty sure I can guess, but I just want to see what the official answer is.

Sorry man, I must've missed this somehow.

First off, because they are fucking DRAGONS 

Second off, The name Duke Seymour as you and most of you know is a disguise put in place by King Delita, however the name itself was something that I'm sure Durbs just pulled out of a hat. (honestly, it always reminded me of the principle from the simpsons, but whatever)

1. Given that there isn't any permanent (?) Brave and Faith alteration, where motivated the decision to have Mediator no longer be a generic class? (At least, I'm relatively sure it isn't anymore even though I haven't opened everything since Bandit basically is Mediator.)

Because Animist > Mediator. I'm a HUGE fan of Blue Magic. In fact the 4 (not from Ivalice) were actually supposed to only have 4 jobs each , all unique to them (using RAD3) and one of Clouds was suppose to be Enemy Skill, which was later loosely adapted into the Animist generic.
(these early ideas were obviously scrapped for the final version)

1. When it comes to the original side-characters, how were Bartholume, Leesha & Olivander conceived?

Like Alma, Bartolume did not exist in the early script, it was not until we went back to fill all plotholes (fucking Raven) that we added Delita, Bart, Alma, Rad, Alicia and Lavian. Due to the story change we had to adapt the story of Duke seymour, as well as the helper that gets them out of the castle, which would be someone on the inside, more of a caretaker of Ramza and Alma themselves.

Leesha and Olivander exist for the same reason as Tesnya. Originally there was no scene written for Bariaus Valley. So I made that one up using the enemy from Dorter, these where nothing more than random unique joining chars originally. Once again, once we went back and redid a good portion of the story, and Delita came into play with his Twin(ees) assassins these characters were given names and a real story.

As for where the names Olivander, Leesha, and Bartolume came from? Idk, probably some random thing Durbs was into that week.

[kyozo22]

Hey guys, another annoying/ trivial question from me! I remember reading a comment (think it was from Elric) that said that chapter 1 used 150 event slots and I was just wondering how many slots were/ are in a the regular vanilla game?

Cheers.

[3lric]

499 Total slots available in Vanilla, however, quite a few are unused.

[kyozo22]

'Kay, so its me again! Bet the team are cursing inwardly!

So, given that Chapter 2 is now in development, was just wondering what that actually entails?

I realise that battle system, jobs, etc have all been done from chapter 1, so does that leave 'just' the ENTDs and events?

(Obviously thats still a ton of work, with EVTCHRs, Marks, balance, the remaining monsters etc and probably other stuff that I really can't think of at the moment!)
I had another question but its slipped my mind! Will edit it in.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

1.  All of the Event scenes need to be made for the bulk of Chapter 2.  (Most of them were scripted, edited, and formatted back over the course of April, but that's really only the first third to half of the work at most since the text-action ratio of cutscenes obviously varies by a lot.)  This is the part we're at now, where most of the work falls on Elric, Jumza, and Pride, the core Eventers of Chapter 2.

2.  Chapter 2-specific gameplay needs to be ironed out.  A lot of groundwork was done in advance but things that were planned for Chapter 2 will likely be changed somewhat as its playtested.  This is the main stuff I usually do before passing it off to other people to playtest*, though I do a lot of other 'pickup work' like the scripting related stuff for Chapter 2 that Elric and co. needed to start doing their part.  (Durbs writes the original drafts of each Chapter's scripts, though, as to not steal his credit - I merely do editing, adaptation, formatting, etc. to make sure everything runs smoothly when it comes to this stuff.)  Since this is mostly stuff I'm responsible for, you can toss on pretty much everything regarding Mark planning onto this point, as it's something I'll be getting to soon.  Elric should be going through the ideas list we've compiled for Chapter 2 both privately and publicly and passing me all the ones he feels have potential, at which point we're going to iron out what we can use, probably change or adapt a bunch of stuff, etc.

3.  Chapter 2-specific Sprites need to be finished, as well as some other miscellaneous artwork-related stuff.  For this Chapter it seems like it will mostly be falling on Kagebunji and Lijj with a few final Sprites from Twinees.  The art workload is nowhere near as large as Chapter 1 but we also want to get Chapter 2 done in a much shorter timeframe without losing quality.  Any EVTCHRs we want to add to the game (either retroactively into Chapter 1 or into Chapter 2) would also fall in here, though most of those are usually done by MikeMitchi.

4.  There's obviously the new Special Units in Chapter 2, ASM related to their mechanics, etc. that will need to be done.  There's also completely unrelated ASM that will be required for Chapter 2 and the work to get everything to be console compatible which we also want done for Chapter 2 at the latest, so this is oddly a much bigger part of the workload than you'd think.  (Some of the stuff we're working on like the Animist's new Support Abilities, Guests in Random Battles, etc. I'm trickling into new Chapter 1 updates to give people more things to toy with while they wait for Chapter 2 to be finished.)  This work falls mostly on Chotokukyan, Pride, and a few others.  The ASM Xifanie released in her thread recently regarding Random Battles is another byproduct of stuff we've been working on, though it's one we ultimately decided not to include.**

5.  We have a few Really Awesome Things planned, including one Really Awesome Thing to crown off Chapter 2.  These are technically related to things already mentioned but will take enough work that they deserve their own entry on this list.  I'm not mentioning anything about these though, as we're putting a lot of work into planning and implementing them and want them to remain a surprise for everyone.

6.  If we have time, we also intend to go back through Chapter 1 to pretty up a few things here and there.  We know a few things there are sloppy beyond simple text errors but we're focusing all our efforts regarding events on Chapter 2, so they won't be fixed until that's released.  But once we have at least most of Chapter 2 under our belt, we do intend to go over Chapter 1's script, etc. and try to smooth over some of the more 'derpy' aspects of it, so there will be reason to replay Chapter 1.  (It won't be mandatory though - unless we fuck something up royally your save should always be compatible between Chapters on-release.)

I think that's a really rough idea of the stuff that goes into each Chapter.  It's a lot more than you'd think, even after we frontloaded a lot of work into Chapter 1 to save us grief later on.

----

*If you can tell from Chapter 1, we didn't have as many playtesters as we'd like beyond me so on release it was probably more difficult than it should have been.  The Beta actually makes the 1.0 release of Journey of the Five look disgustingly easy.  Someday I may make a Developer's Edition release that includes Beta setups, starting money and items, loot drops, etc. for Chapter 1 and adapt subsequent Chapters to follow its curve.  It's an entirely different kind of beast from what was actually released as Chapter 1, and waaaaay different from the mostly-balanced game that v1.96 is.

**There's nothing wrong with this hack in either coding or content and it's a very awesome hack in general, just to note for everyone, and you should (SHOULD, at least at the time of writing this) even be able to apply it to your Journey of the Five ISO yourself if you want to.  It was only not included because it broke the feel of being a late-90s RPG, something Elric, myself, and most everyone else has been trying to keep alive in Journey of the Five.  While we obviously pay homage to a lot of series, some of which came after FFT's release, we also are trying to keep the game as being, at least in spirit if not in content, something you feel like you could've picked off the shelf and bought as a kid in the late-90s when you play it.  This means we're very careful about combining modern convenience with 90s design tropes, etc., and a lot of mechanical things end up not being included simply because they don't seem like something we'd expect a game designer in the late-90s to make.  Or they just violate FFT so thoroughly that they feel completely unnatural and we scrap them for that reason, too, but you get the idea.

[kyozo22]

Thats all you guys have to do? Piece of piss! Couple of weeks till release tops, I reckon... No biggy.

Thanks for that... mammoth readathon. Nah, seriously thanks for all the info, definately a post that needs linked to if anyone makes any 'y u no release quicker1!1'

Awesome things that are so really awesome that they get capitalised? Damn! Already thought chapter 1 was awesome enough...

p.s Developers edition? Yes please, sounds like the 1.3 of JotF!

[3lric]

Thank you for all your interest.

And thank you Raven for summing up everything, there's a bit more small things, but basically that's the
gist of it.

[kyozo22]

That's no problem, Elric.

Lemme put it this way: if I had a computer that wasn't an archaic piece of crap and could handle the patcher, as well as regular internet, I'd be there to help!

(with eventing, that is. Looks fairly easy to pick up, in comparison to other aspects of modding FFT!)

edit: Finally remembered my other question. Will you be releasing the various ASM hacks, unique sprites etc after the project is completed? Assuming, of course that they aren't already available.

[ArkthePieKing]

I have a quick question, and apologies if it hasn't been answered yet. All of the animations in the game are amazing. Stinger feels like Dante's stinger, I when snake hides it genuinely looks like something Snake would do, however, there's one animation that has stood out and bugged me for a while: Whirlwind Blade. Is there any particular reason that Link doesn't spin during it? It's just so iconic. I feel like the animation chosen doesn't do the move justice. Especially after seeing the sword turtle thing (name escapes me) spin. That animation right there would honestly be amazing in itself.

The patch is incredible, and I love basically everything about this. This isn't even a nitpick, just a curiosity I had.