Final Fantasy Hacktics

Got another unit ready to go as far as texturing, modeling and animating. It'll be the first ranged unit. It will shoot seeds, which finally gives me a reason to implement projectile based skills. The unit will also have a unique mechanic regarding its death.

I'll see what I can do as far as a friendly build for creating events. The Overworld cannot currently drop the player into a story battle, only random encounters. I can probably figure something out for just starting the game up in a designated scene. I think I have some of the stuff documented, if not, I'll throw something together.

I think i've matched my definition of an event to FFT. It's basically a set of visual actions during a skill/battle/cutscene. Skills and cutscenes both utilize the same classes, so whatever can be done in one can be done in another with some exceptions.

Actions supported:
Focus/zoom/tilt/raise/revolve camera
CharDialogue
DisplayEffects - shows status symbol or stat change numbers
SetActorPosition - Teleport to position
ShowActor - works for "Hide" as well
LookActor - makes actor look at tile, position or another actor
MoveActorTo
RemoveActor
RevolveActor
WalkCharacter - Like MoveActor, but plays walk animation
AnimateCharacter - Set animation state
StartEmitter - turns on/off particle emitter
DisplayMenu
DisplaySkillName

Update
The textures for the path and the building are pretty bad, but I threw them together as fast as possible. Working on characters is my main priority because I don't think people want to play/look at a game about characters that are all clones of the same parking valet. Or maybe they do.

Forest/Swamp Units
I would like to do a frog, but one of the issues I'm afraid of is how a frog moves. It hops, stops, then hops again. It'd require slightly different movement code. I don't think it'd be that difficult to implement, but I'm trying to avoid adding complication at this stage.
As for the spider, I think that's doable. I have a swamp/water monster that's currently in a very early state. Will hopefully cover the gap in the monsters not having something that fits the status effect niche and give me a reason to implement more status effects.

As always, thanks again for the kind words. It does help keep me going.

Update
Most of my progress has been related to content. I've started working on the first/tutorial mission for the game. A rough draft of the stage is modeled, textured and playable. I've also got some of the dialogue and actions for the scene scripted, but there's still quite a bit left to do. It also looks strange with all of the models being placeholders. As a result, I've started working on characters. I have to keep things simple as I'm not that skilled, nor do I want to spend truck loads of time on something that might be a placeholder. Base female model is completed and I've created a rough character based off of it. This one will be used in the tutorial mission.

The doctor and the bat guy are characters I made to goof off and probably will not be used. That means I've got 7-9 characters left to design, model and texture. Hopefully I start getting faster at this. Any suggestions for a forest or swamp monster?

Thanks for the kind words.

As for when the engine is "complete", I have two things I'd like to accomplish.

Barring the graphical elements such as the unit models and stages, the engine uses XML files to define just about everything: skills, stages, overworld, encounters, items, events, how skills are displayed, stores, cities, etc. I think this will prove to be quite friendly and attractive to someone that wants to make their own game/scenarios/skills/whatever. To support that I plan on writing up some documentation in a wiki. I already have this started, but it is by no means complete.

The second thing is I have my own story planned. I hope to have the engine far enough along to release a rough draft of the first chapter in a few months. The major component missing from the engine to facilitate this is the story module. I think that'll be simple compared to the other modules though. Asset creation is the biggest obstacle for me at the moment.

Update
Playable Demo Released:
https://howdogamedev.itch.io/tacticalrpg

Two Stages
Alta Swamp - Poisonous swamp. Enemies include shrooms, mosquito mantids and slimes
Alta River - A narrow river crossing. Enemies include shrooms, mantids and slimes

Overworld
4 locations, albeit you can't do anything at the Hut or Port.
Deployment area dictated by which direction a location is approached from.

Party
Two shroom men, two mantids, two slimes, one mosquito, one doctor, one "Guy". Guy is pretty worthless though, so I wouldn't use him.

To Do
Add skill description display
Assign proper particle effects to skills
Improve UI
Add mouse support
Start modeling generic female base

New swamp stage is under construction. Need to finish up texturing.

Lighting system still needs work.
Particles can be used with skills and as stage props.
Usable items are implemented

Next up:
Equipment
Overworld store

I'm afraid that punching and updated driver's license photos are outside of my skill level. I did get particles to be much more flexible though. Still can't map textures yet.



With some tweaks, I should be able to do some more complicated stuff.

Updates
Particles - I've fixed my particle emitter and made it customizable. There's certainly still more work to do on it, but once I can assign textures, it should allow for much better skill effects.

Sound - Menus now have sound effects for scrolling and clicking buttons and cancelling actions. Battles also have background music, albeit it's static for the time being. Fixing this is one or two lines of code, I just don't have much music to work with, so I haven't bothered. Skills can also generate sounds now, but it's based on the "action" layer of the skill's event, instead of being tied to the animation's frame. This will eventually be fixed, but this is low on the priority list.

Models
I've created some simple armor and a few other accessories for the male human model. This hasn't proved difficult. A link to the armor can be found here:
http://i.imgur.com/1lhtRg7.png
It's a work in progress, but seems to work pretty well.


Current Focus
Figure out what's necessary to emulate the "Cure" and "Ice" spells from Tactics. These two spells should help provide some direction for me.

Update

• Story Module - I'm in the early planning stages for this.


• Graphics

   
• Male Model - Done as far as I'm concerned. Above screenshot has him with some random accessories I modeled.

   
• Female Model - I'd like to experiment a bit more with the male model to make sure I can make changes as easily as I hope before starting on this

   
• Outlines - Made the outlining of characters much finer.

   
• Lighting - Character lighting is clearly broken. Shader seems to always have light coming from camera's position. Will look into fix./li]


• Battle Module

   
• Result - Need to have the battle store its results, along with character experience gained, etc.

   
• Inventory - Currently working on framework for having consumables be available.

   
• Projectiles - Getting projectiles working is currently on my radar. Not quite sure how I'll do it though.

Pretty happy with the human model's shape. The rig is pretty easy to use as well. If anyone has any suggestions on eye styling, I'm all ears. I've not been thrilled with anything I've come up with yet. Also not sure how I'm going to do weapons. At first, I'll probably just have a base model for each type.

Hello all,

I've created another demo. It can be found here:
https://howdogamedev.itch.io/tacticalrpg

There is a mild issue with this one, but I don't think it'll become a problem unless you play it for an extended period of time. Some of the buffers for objects are not being disposed of completely. Currently hunting down the cause.

The major addition to this demo is the ability to play on the waterfall map and unit deployment being implemented. The overworld module can now spawn random encounters when walking across wilderness locations, but that's not available in the demo.

Thanks,
HDGD

Thanks for the feedback on the stage, Guru. I'd agree the bridge is looking pretty rough. I zoned out and didn't make the details as bold as the cliff face, water and the stone island. I think you're right that it looks a bit out of place. I'll see about changing some things up when I work on stages some more.

Project is still very much alive. Most of the progress is on the "Adventure" module. The adventure module could be considered the backbone as far as single player goes. It will coordinate the exchange of data between the overworld, story/event, party and battle modules. Various supporting systems like the party and story modules need further work as well. Once I feel that those are far enough along, I'll try to make some brief campaign to play through with the content I've got for testing.

I'm still hammering away on the human model. Collected some feedback from friends and I'm still messing with the anatomical proportions. I've solved a few topology issues as well to increase the flexibility of the model. I probably need to go through a few more character modeling tutorials and get more comfortable.

Update
I tell myself to work on certain parts of the game, but inevitably get sidetracked by something else. Managed to work out the necessary shaders to emulate Wind Waker style water effects. My texturing needs to be more consistent, but I'm still experimenting with it.

I've solved the shoulder topology problem for my base humanoid model. After I fix the elbow and hip topology, I can start on the necessary animations and then on to customizing clothes, armor, etc for actual characters.

There are a few bugs that I need to track down and fix before I move along any further. After that, I'll resume work on the human model.

Update

• Complete


• Skills and effects can now have a miss chance assigned.


• Skills have a few more options for range calculation and AOE calculation.


• Can view movement range of enemy units.




• Todo




• Add turn order display


• Complete animations for human unit


• Create Tactician 2.0.

Current Focuses:

• Overworld


• Party System


• Random Encounters


• Dynamically Generate Battle Scenes


• New Stages




• Will be low detail


• Add simple water system

Current Stage Progress:

Update
Another demo is ready to go! Find it here.

Updates Include:

• New Mushroom Unit


• New Mantis Unit


• Victory Conditions


• Improved Skill Events


• AI Improvements

As always, let me know if you encounter any bugs, have any questions or any comments.

Thanks, and yes, Tactician is the name of the AI. It generates a list of all possible actions in a turn, removes all the absolutely negative ones (Kill ally, etc), puts the positive actions into a weighted list and then randomly picks one. The eventual plan is to implement personality for a unit, so a more violent character might be more likely to pick an action that kills an enemy, even if it means hurting an ally.


I've got the texturing for the mantis about as far as I want to take it for now. Also changed some of the coloring a bit on the default textures for the other units. Rigging the bones for animation is also complete and I've started working on the idle animation.

The Scatter Spore skill is actually one of the few I've come up with so far. I don't have the graphics figured out for it yet though. I'll probably work on it more after the mantis. Turning an enemy character into a mushroom could be fun, but it reminds me of "Malboro Spores", which is one of the most infuriating skills I've come across.

Brief Update: Victory conditions now exist! As long as a battle scene defines victory, the game will exit and return to stage select. Nothing fancy, but it's something. Animations are also complete for the Mantis. I'm burnt out on rigging/modeling, so I'm refocusing on the overworld module.

Recorded another Berserk vs Tactician fight with the new Mushroom unit. Nothing too spectacular, but all of the skills for the slime now have skill event settings for them. There's another video of me playing poorly against Tactician on my channel, but it's a bit long winded and I win by being cheap.

Updates

• Tactician - I fixed a few bugs that were really limiting what skill possibilities Tactician could choose from. It's now a bit more effective, but could certainly use more work.


• Mushroom - All required animations are complete except for the "casting" animation. It's combat ready, but I'm short on ideas for skills.


• Scenes - Settings within a scene can now alter a unit's texture and portrait. Adding "Name" changes and other stat changes will be trivial.

Current Focus
The Mantis texturing and animations are next up on the todo list. Once I'm finished with that, on to the humans. Alongside that I hope to work more on the Overworld. With the changes I've made to the scene class, I should be able to randomly generate fights. Just need to get a basic party structure and it'll be good to go.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

And the fun begins! I should have known some graphics cards wouldn't like that I'm sloppy.

Open this file in notepad:
[gameDirectory]\Data\Shaders\stagePreview.v

Change line 5 from:
vTexCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord0
to
vTexCoord = gl_MultiTexCoord0.xy

Also, figured I'd edit this to add my latest video.

Any feedback is welcome, even/especially if it's just "it doesn't run" or "it runs badly".

The demo is now out. Outside of any reported bugfixes, I probably won't release anything too substantial until I finish the rigging, animations and texturing for the mushroom and mantis.

Again, be forewarned that the demo is extremely barebones. The core game is there, but skill effects, any kind of polish and various features simply aren't implemented. There's no victory condition yet, there's no backing out of a battle and no missing skills. The demo is meant more to just make sure it works for people and there isn't something glaring that I've missed. As always, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc, feel free to post them.

Thanks again for all your support.

Update
Modeling completed for a new unit. I've got my tanky powerhouse unit for the forest figured out. You can guess the game that inspired the unit and just like its inspiration it'll be a low mobility powerhouse. Rigging and animation still need to be completed for the mushroom man and the mantis. I plan on having the mushroom man be very tanky, with very low mobility, but with an obscene strength stat. Perhaps it'd be capable of OHKOing units outside of something like a knight. I'll experiment more later.

Demo
I'm working on this right now. The plan is to just have two battles available. Both battles will be identical with a squad of orange slimes against blue slimes. The difference will be in one, orange is controlled by the "Berserk" AI. In the other, orange is controlled by the player. I will have this up before EOD and will update this post with a link to the Itch.Io download.

Demo is live

The demo is missing quite a few features. There is no victory condition, there is no way to back out of a battle. Only one of the skills has any kind of visual effect, and even then it's primitive. Currently have not added skill descriptions.

Job: Slimin

• Goo Bomb - Short Range Delayed AOE (DMG:5HP Cost:16MP)


• Goo Burst - Instant AOE (DMG:4HP Cost: 5MP Heals Self:5HP)


• Goo Heal - Single Target Resurrection (Heal:5HP Cost:3MP 5HP)


• Goo Touch - Single Target Poison