Patch Proposals/Ideas Thread

[Sephirot24]

Sounds very interesting. I think that imputing all the text changes, and mostly the spriting part would be the stuff which'd take the most time. That, if you don't change the story at all... although can you imagine Ramza as a Mech sprite entering his dying father's chamber

[RavenOfRazgriz]

@ SilvasRuin:  I talked about a similar idea about a month or so ago with Saigas, Hana, Eternal248, etc, though we ended up moving more towards a U.C.-era homage Mobile Suit Gundam themed game than a custom-mech theme like Front Mission or Armored Core.

Overall though, the main problem was graphics - everything else seemed more than doable by someone who actually knows what they're doing (aka, not me), and I had ideas for the job tree and etc going on.  Again, main problem was graphics.

I could go over the ideas I had in more detail back then, if you like.

[SilvasRuin]

I certainly wouldn't mind it.  It's probably worth pursuing when the current big projects begin approaching completion.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

I certainly wouldn't mind it.  It's probably worth pursuing when the current big projects begin approaching completion.

My original idea was Mobile Suit Gundam-styled, remember, so having units that could overlap for both sides on the Job Tree was a no-no.

The take on this was to split the Job Tree in two, using some ridiculous Job Prerequisite bullshit so that each faction got at least 8 generic Jobs to switch between, with the Special Units not being access any of the Job Tree beyond their unique Job (which, given my base idea, left most unique units in the equivalent of a Gundam, is understandable imo).  I had a couple ways of doing this, but I can't remember them all right now.  Simplest seem to just make the enemy jobs unable to be unlocked on the Job Tree, meaning locking Special Units into their Job would be the main problem, though I think there's a way to pull if off.  To compensate for only being in 1 Job, Special Units would obviously be able to learn a wider range of R/S/M.  Another idea was to make them Worker 8-style monsters, but Mike said that limited animations.

In terms of attacking, my idea there was to simply make each mech's skillset represent all its different attacks.  I'm assuming animating the different weapons for such would be a logistical nightmare, though.  If it's possible to make skills that can only be used while "X" weapon is equipped, that'd easily remedy the Skillset problem by letting players equip weapons to allow them to use different attacks during different battles.  The latter would be my preferred option, for obvious reasons.  Then, it's just a matter of making the standard "Attack" command always reference the bare-fisted animation / use one specific formula, and make the bare-fisted animation into that unit's melee weapon strike, such as beam saber or whatever. (If possible, if not just turn it off and make an ability that does the same basic thing).  That's the basic idea, anyway.  Obviously there's playtesting and seeing what works / doesn't work, since I don't do ASM or somesuch hacking at this time, but it's a start.

The main problems after that would be animations / sprites, and the maps.  If you don't give a damn about the scale, the maps aren't even an issue, I suppose.  So it's getting all the sprites done from pretty much 100% scratch and somehow changing animations or whatever.  Ideas I had on a general scale here involved stuff like making the dead animation involve a shitton of explosions, etc.  Gameplay-wise, I considered making all non-generic classes immune to Crystal status, if possible.

Finally, story, but since I've got a lot of pre-hacking planning already down for a Mobile Suit Gundam-homage hack, I'd be able to personally get that done quickly.  If you go for a Front Mission kinda thing, you'll obviously need to be getting to work on that.

Basic overview of my idea as I described it to Saigas and Hana, don't think I left anything out.

[SilvasRuin]

Explosions in the death animation wouldn't work as the death animation is the hit frame then dead frame.
The scale of the buildings throughout the maps... well except for indoors stuff, the scale actually would appear MORE fitting for mechs, at least in my opinion.
The way you mentioned seems to be the only way to make the weapons look right.  I don't think I'd go through the trouble for that though.  I'd just worry about making the attack animations at least seem like it is plausible it originated from a weapon on the mech.
The gameplay wouldn't necessarily dictate much for the story, so I think that's a bit of a moot point.

Gundam, Armored Core, Front Mission, it doesn't matter what the basis is as long as you don't give different factions exclusive mechs.  Actually... you can do that without screwing with the job tree.  There should be enough special jobs that if you don't go overboard with the playable ones, you could simply use them for a fair number of the enemy exclusive mechs.

I personally feel making the mechs customizable would be superior in every way than making them all static.  The game would grow far too boring otherwise.  This isn't some shooter or action game.  If there isn't some solid diversity in what the sides are throwing at each other, it is going to get old fast.  I really can't think of any benefits to having static mechs unless you just want to be stubborn about what can and can't be used (like for instance trying to mimic the rigid mech types of Gundam).

I also can't really agree with trying to mimic any specific source too closely.  FFT's engine is going to have things it can do and things it can't do, and there's just no way there's any source it can fully mimic without issue.  Better to get creative and make what you can with what you have and come up with your own concepts.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

The scale of the buildings throughout the maps... well except for indoors stuff, the scale actually would appear MORE fitting for mechs, at least in my opinion.

I'll agree there.

The gameplay wouldn't necessarily dictate much for the story, so I think that's a bit of a moot point.

I just meant the story would need to be redone.  I can't see a bunch of mechs huddled around a coffee table discussing Marquis Elmdor de Limberry, I'm sorry.

Gundam, Armored Core, Front Mission, it doesn't matter what the basis is as long as you don't give different factions exclusive mechs.  Actually... you can do that without screwing with the job tree.  There should be enough special jobs that if you don't go overboard with the playable ones, you could simply use them for a fair number of the enemy exclusive mechs.

You can do that, too.  It depends how many playable mechs you want as part of the standard job tree.

I personally feel making the mechs customizable would be superior in every way than making them all static.  The game would grow far too boring otherwise.  This isn't some shooter or action game.  If there isn't some solid diversity in what the sides are throwing at each other, it is going to get old fast.  I really can't think of any benefits to having static mechs unless you just want to be stubborn about what can and can't be used (like for instance trying to mimic the rigid mech types of Gundam).

You missed my point there - the only rigid would obviously be factions, and potentially disabling equippable secondaries depending on how skill sets end up working, the second one being something that any mech based SRPG using the FFT engine may need to do anyway.  I guess the Specials would have a bit of rigidness to them, I suppose, but even in standard FFT your Specials are often best left in their main classes when in-use anyway, save a couple exceptions like Reis.

You would still have access to R/S/M, equipment... and if it can be done to make equipped items turn specific abilities on/off on a set, secondary skillsets, along with equippable stuffs as you said such as armor upgrades, etc.  I suppose the other form of rigidness would come from a faction based job tree... but I actually had plans to fix that via Join After Events that allowed you to get units that start as enemy mechs (in the way you sometimes get a Lancer that can't even be a Lancer via Invite in the regular game, etc), as well as dispersing 'captured' units into the enemy rosters.  Hopefully I can find a way to make the ones the player gets from Join After Events keep that one mech job open to be revisited later as well, but fuck me if I know anything about hacking to get that far yet.

The main reason I say the U.C. Era is also because it has the most amount of variance in its mechs while still keeping them all simple enough for an FFT-transition into SRPG-land.  That, and those series didn't suck ass.  That's pretty important.  Also because it's quick - source material is abundant to get it together graphically, which is the biggest challenge from what I can see, meaning focus can be given to the abilities / overall engines so that more mech based SRPGs could be made and actually have a working engine to base from.

Then again, I have the idea set rather well mentally and probably am not explaining it as well as I should.  But if things work they way they seem like they would in my head right now, I don't think diversity would be that big a deal, especially should that one aforementioned thing about weapon -> ability work.  But like I said, fuck me if I know if we can do that.  I spent too much time playing the hacks and such and not enough time making them.

I also can't really agree with trying to mimic any specific source too closely.  FFT's engine is going to have things it can do and things it can't do, and there's just no way there's any source it can fully mimic without issue.  Better to get creative and make what you can with what you have and come up with your own concepts.

Plus, I suck at designing my own mechs.  I'm not gonna pretend like I'm any good at that.  Closest I get to at good at that is slapping something good together on Armored Core.  Seriously.

[Cheetah]

There are several 2D Isometric Front Mission games. There is a pretty good chance that one of them has sprites that are of a comparable size to the human sprites currently used.

[Vanya]

Off the top of my head I'd say the in-battle sprites from either Front Mission 1 or 2 are closest in size.
But they'd still need some modification and extra frames to work correctly.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

There are several 2D Isometric Front Mission games. There is a pretty good chance that one of them has sprites that are of a comparable size to the human sprites currently used.

If we could use those, that'd speed the design process up quite a bit, I would think.

Meaning we'd need animations and to get the general idea of how mech ability sets and such would work.  Once we have that, I think we'll have the most important part down - a working mech-based FFT that people can use as a base for pretty much any mech-based FFT hack, since I see a lot of mech games sharing a lot of the basic gameplay changes from normal FFT, such as however we end up handling secondary ability sets, and the job wheel in terms of two-faction, non-unit-overlapping armies.

EDIT:  Also, I've only played Front Mission 4, so I could be wrong, but doesn't that series handle your mech's sprite by-part (head, arms, legs, etc) in way of Armored Core?  If so, that doesn't seem like it'd translate over well.  Hence another reason for my choice in Mobile Suit Gundam over mech franchises - the base mechs look the same regardless of their equipment, meaning easy translation into a job tree and equipment setup.

Though considering how old the original Front Mission games are (iirc), it's possible they follow a more FFT-friendly sprite method.

[Vanya]

IIRC Front mission lets you choose legs, arms, body, engine, and head.
It shouldn't be a big deal to text hack the equipment and slot labels to reflect something along those lines.
The only real problem I can foresee is in how the various weapons animate, especially for long range weapons like lasers and what not.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

IIRC Front mission lets you choose legs, arms, body, engine, and head.
It shouldn't be a big deal to text hack the equipment and slot labels to reflect something along those lines.
The only real problem I can foresee is in how the various weapons animate, especially for long range weapons like lasers and what not.

I didn't mean equipping.  The actual equipping doesn't seem like a big issue.

I mean that in those types of games, usually changing your equipment reflects a change in your sprite itself (new arms, etc).  That's something FFT can't reflect to my knowledge.  Though I suppose you can just use the different sprite parts in the game to assemble a sprite for each job slot, then make equipment that would make sense on static units, especially since it's again best to get the proof-of-concept down first.

My idea was to somehow make "Attack" always reference the barehanded animation, and make said barehanded animation that unit's melee weapon instead (possibly giving every mech in the game innate Martial Arts so said melees do good damage), then have equipped L and R weapons be referenced for instant-cast (potentially "MP" using) abilities (with all abilities that can't reference a proper weapon grayed out) that would simulate the unit's long ranged weapons in addition to actual abilities of the unit.

Thus the big question would actually be getting animations themselves, from what I can see, if done in that way.  But I don't hack, so this may not be possible for one reason or another, which would suck ass since it's such a simple way to fix the problem and allows secondary skillsets much more easily.

[Vanya]

Right, that would be a hurdle.
That's an interesting idea.

I think it could be possible to have the mechs have individualized parts, but it would take a pretty hefty ASM hack(s).
The dirty, inefficient way to do it would be to use up all the sprites to reflect different combinations of parts, but then we'd probably only have a handful of base types to work with. If we had 4 each of bodies, arms, and legs we would need 64 sprites to represent the different combinations of parts.
The crazy ASM magic way would require completely rewriting the sprite loading routines.

Either way it would be far easier to just have the jobs represent a particular kind of mech.

[Cheetah]

Frankly it sounds like you want to hack Front Mission, it would likely save you a lot of time.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Right, that would be a hurdle.
That's an interesting idea.

I think it could be possible to have the mechs have individualized parts, but it would take a pretty hefty ASM hack(s).
The dirty, inefficient way to do it would be to use up all the sprites to reflect different combinations of parts, but then we'd probably only have a handful of base types to work with. If we had 4 each of bodies, arms, and legs we would need 64 sprites to represent the different combinations of parts.
The crazy ASM magic way would require completely rewriting the sprite loading routines.

Either way it would be far easier to just have the jobs represent a particular kind of mech.

I don't think we're going to find anyone who actually wants to do that kind of ridiculous ASM'ing.

Which is why I went with a base mech series that had standardized models.  That, and I'm totally not biased in any way towards it.  Not at all.

Frankly it sounds like you want to hack Front Mission, it would likely save you a lot of time.

But that's not as fun!

That and I've never even played the actual Front Mission games, myself, besides a little bit of aforementioned Front Mission 4.

[Cheetah]

I recommend playing some of the early ones, they are available through multiple channels, and I think your desire to take on such a hacking project will likely be satiated.

[SilvasRuin]

I've only been able to play the first, and I see possibilities in the FFT engine that Front Mission I didn't have.

[Xifanie]

The idea is Asmo's:

An AI Tournament patch.
Yes, right now we're using 1.3 as a base for AI tournaments, but there are many cons to that. 1.3 needs to be rebalanced for multiplayer use. Just look: many skills cannot be accessed, golem is utterly broken, only the top available items are used, no tier 3 monsters, etc.
The goal of such a patch would be to create an item pool where every item has a different use, but in overall is not better or worse than another item in the same category. The same would go for monsters; tier 3 would not be superior to tier 1, only different. Everything would be balanced for multiplayer use only.

[woodenbandman]

Give it a forum and I'll help brainstorm ideas.

[Dome]

The idea is Asmo's:

An AI Tournament patch.
Yes, right now we're using 1.3 as a base for AI tournaments, but there are many cons to that. 1.3 needs to be rebalanced for multiplayer use. Just look: many skills cannot be accessed, golem is utterly broken, only the top available items are used, no tier 3 monsters, etc.
The goal of such a patch would be to create an item pool where every item has a different use, but in overall is not better or worse than another item in the same category. The same would go for monsters; tier 3 would not be superior to tier 1, only different. Everything would be balanced for multiplayer use only.

That's a nice idea
At least it deserve a topic in new project, if not a forum section

[Blank]

The idea is Asmo's:

An AI Tournament patch.
Yes, right now we're using 1.3 as a base for AI tournaments, but there are many cons to that. 1.3 needs to be rebalanced for multiplayer use. Just look: many skills cannot be accessed, golem is utterly broken, only the top available items are used, no tier 3 monsters, etc.
The goal of such a patch would be to create an item pool where every item has a different use, but in overall is not better or worse than another item in the same category. The same would go for monsters; tier 3 would not be superior to tier 1, only different. Everything would be balanced for multiplayer use only.

An FFT balanced for PvP(Or in this case CvC) would be amazing.

Definitely deserves its own forum.