-= Gametoast.com =-

Some WIP shots of the skin I'm working on. It uses the Generic Sith model It's almost done. I just need to finish his pants and boots

The skin is based on the top middle guy:

and this fellow:

a great skinn!!

@Saitek:Sorry for the late reply, but the skin looks really nice. Are you actually re-UV-ing it? Good work, either way.

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I know I haven't had many updates in recent weeks; I've been both sick and dealing with a very bizarre problem (mapwise), that's had me hung up for over a week. I think I hit some bizarre kind of memory error on local teams (I've read before that the number of local teams one can add is unlimited, but I had problems when I tried to add a 7th or 8th team). Anyway, after more than a week of trying to sort it out, I just decided to do a workaround. I've condensed some of the teams (this may actually be a more elegant solution in the long run anyway), and I turned one of the "teams" into a set of animated props (thanks to AceMastermind for pointing me in the right direction there).

Scripting-wise, I'm up to the point in the quest where the gameplay is going to be a bit more open-ended. I think I'm going to get to script in some sidequests now, which should be fun.

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Also, a question for anyone following the progress of this map: Would you like it if I gave more regular updates, even if they weren't necessarily progress updates? I would be able to give updates on things like backstory, gameplay, and maybe characters/monsters (a la the updates given for Super Smash Bros.).

The updates would be in a format like this:

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Update: Spira: Besaid is set in the world of Spira. For those of you unfamiliar with this world of Final Fantasy 10, Spira is a small, religious society beset by a terrible calamity: Sin. Sin is a gigantic "monster" (for lack of a more descriptive term) who ravages the world and targets large centers of population or technological diversity. As such, most of the citizens of Spira live in small towns, like Besaid, where technology, or "machina," is rarely present.

Our main character, Tidus, finds himself thrust into this world of Spira - torn from his homeland of Zanarkand - after he runs into Sin in his own home. He awakes on a beach near Besaid with little knowledge of how he got here or why.

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So let me know, I'll put up a poll.

Maveritchell wrote:@Saitek:Sorry for the late reply, but the skin looks really nice. Are you actually re-UV-ing it? Good work, either way.

Nope, that's the default UV setup. I'm just kind of trial-and-erroring and it's turned out better than I'd expected.
I'm not quite done with it yet but I'll get it to you as soon as I finish it.

A quick update: Sidequest one is done. It was definitely harder to implement than the next sidequest I'm putting in will be, but it's pretty neat in concept. The second sidequest is probably going to be a bit harder than the first one, though.

Another update: Sidequest two is done. Actually, the sidequest has been done for a while, I just had a really hard time deciding on the reward (and making a reward that would work, lol). I ended up having to try out a few things, but I think you'll really enjoy the reward - if you manage to beat this sidequest.

New picture?

Love those mshs too. Don't forget to add coloured shadow regions to your water (and an underwater sound effect region if you can, then give the assets to me) .

On a side note, I've noticed that probably the weakest point of this map is probably the actual battling component. As such, I'll be uploading a sides test map later tonight - open to everyone - to let them test out a little bit of my sides. Hopefully I can get some feedback that'll be able to improve this.

EDIT: Spira: Moonflow, the battle system tweaking map for Spira: Besaid, has been released. Please check it out (in the Released Maps/Mods section) and give feedback.

Update:

Here's a quick overview of "overdrives," since I just got this particular feature scripted out.

What is an overdrive? In Final Fantasy 10, overdrives were character-specific special moves that the character had access to after a certain amount of battling. In a similar fashion, these overdrives are available to you in Spira: Besaid. Each character can access one overdrive, but it may only be used once, and then after that you must kill a certain amount of fiends before the overdrive is available to you again.

What do overdrives look like? In Final Fantasy 10, these were elaborate animations detailing exceedingly good-looking attacks. Not so much here. There's only so much I can do with particle editor, especially in light of the attack animations needing to be nearly-instant. So unfortunately, no attack cutscenes. However, I have made some special particle effects for each overdrive, so they retain some similarity to their Final Fantasy counterparts:
Tidus using his overdrive, Energy Rain:
Wakka unleashing Attack Reels against a hapless fiend:

How will overdrives work? As mentioned before, overdrives won't be available to you all the time. That means it would be wisest to save these powerful attacks for whenever you're in a battle with an extremely powerful fiend, or perhaps for when you find the odds stacked heavily against you. However, once you've slain enough fiends, a message will appear indicating that your overdrive has charged up. This message will continue to appear until you use your overdrive - it's best not to forget that you have this fantastic weapon at your disposal.

Additionally, overdrives are a by-the-character thing. That means, for example, if you've used Tidus's overdrive, but not Wakka's, you still have access to Wakka's. Likewise, if you charge up Tidus's overdrive, and you had just used Wakka's, you would need to charge up Wakka's separately to use Wakka's. Only kills made by a character count towards charging their overdrive. (E.g. if Tidus makes a couple kills, Wakka can't make a lot to finish charging Tidus's overdrive.)

Finally, you may notice I never mentioned Yuna - the third playable character in my demo map - in all of this. Why is this? Does she not have an overdrive? Well, yes - that is true. Yuna has no overdrive. This is because she has the exceptionally powerful ability to summon an Aeon - a powerful magic creature - to fight for her. In fact, there's a good chance that this Aeon has her own overdrive...

Edit: I forgot to mention this - to prevent the character from accidentally using their overdrive and missing, if you do accidentally manage to use your overdrive, and it doesn't hit anything, then all you need to do is return to a save sphere and reselect your character. You will have your one use of your overdrive returned to you.

the overdrive looks cool. i was wondering will there be anyway to, like, SAVE your progress. like compaigns? so that if you have leveled high then the game crashes you looseit?

i dont think this is possible so i wanted to ask.

I've been thinking it through. I'd love to put in a save feature, if I could, but it looks like it may be impractical. Unfortunately, leveling isn't the only variable, there's also a number of other smaller things and of course the actual exact progress through the game. If I can figure out a good way to do it, I'll definitely put it in. If I can't, then unfortunately there will be no save feature. (Fortunately this won't be nearly as long as a "real" RPG; it'll probably only be about 1-2 (if that) hours max.

Update: I've got NPCs in, both Al Bhed and Spiran. You can "talk" with them by walking up to them. Also, I've decided to at least give a shot at putting a save system of sorts in. It'll be really basic, saving only player status (levels, stats, moves) and progress through the game (based on certain intervals coded into the map).

Tentatively, it'll work like this: At any given point in the game, you will be able to approach certain predefined regions (Save Regions - there will be very few of these, maybe only one or two on the whole map) and be given a "code" of sorts. Whenever you start a new game, before you complete anything, you can approach the first Save Region, which will be right by your initial spawn point, and be teleported to a room where you will enter a code. Once you enter the code, you will be teleported back to the initial spawn point and the game will (hopefully, I haven't tested it completely) start from, more or less, where you left off.

Btw, please give some feedback. It's no fun for me to keep updating the same post two or three times because no one's said anything.

How will the "entering the code" part work?

It'll be based on hitting objects with numbers on them.

I think I'm just going to use OnObjectKill with regenerating objects. I use OnEnterRegion too often.

Edit: I've tested the save function, and it works! For now. I've got to keep updating the save function everytime I script in new story objectives. Also, eventually I'm going to make it so that the player has a set amount of lives to finish the story with, and once I do that I'll have to revamp the save function somewhat to make it incorporate number of lives left.
Btw, the save function is going to be fairly bare-bones - it won't save progress towards or completion of sidequests. However, this shouldn't be a huge problem as most of the sidequests involve finding things. Once you know where to look they should become much easier.

Mav', those pic look soooo awesome!

wow im glad you were able to do the save feature. I think this is turning out really nicely.
bty. will the player be on the same level as before?

cloneknight wrote:wow im glad you were able to do the save feature. I think this is turning out really nicely.
bty. will the player be on the same level as before?

Yep. Level/stats is one of the biggest variables, so it's definitely part of the save feature. Pretty much the only thing that won't be saved is progress through or completion of sidequests, like I mentioned earlier.

this map is simply beautifal man. I never play FF games. But I did love kingdom hearts. I heard they were similar.



Here is an idea. What about voiceovers? wouldnt that work? wouldnt u just need to make an event where if you talk to a civilian(like in ofm) insted of text play a sound. thatd be sweet! yet again, GREAT LOOKIN MAP!

Voiceovers. I've thought about them before, and there are a couple obstacles.
1) That's a lot of recording I'd either need to do with my poor-quality mic or rely on someone(s) else to do.
2) I don't have access to the original voice actors from Final Fantasy, so hearing the characters speak would be weird.
I may look into it, but right now using simple dialogue looks to be the most elegant, since it's the easiest for people to comprehend (and you can't mix objective dialogue boxes with sounds).

I've finished beating my head against the wall that is custom sound, for now. For whatever reason, I either have a mental block against getting certain things to work, but I know a way around and that's what I'm going to use. Hopefully you'll see some more frequent updates out of me in the storyline department (the story - that I've got scripted in - is starting to get really cool, in my opinion).

Update: I think I can finally see some daylight. I've started working on the final temple area, which, aside from a few sidequest things, is just about the last thing I have to do (that and update the save feature). It's going to be a lot of work getting all the temple puzzles and bosses in, but at least I know (sort've) what I've got left to do. Hopefully, I'll get this done within a month.

Update: As I was creating the method by which the player accesses the last part of the game, I realized that my current characters would be unable to do what was necessary with the abilities they had. So just for one small section of the game, the player will have access to a guest character - that means he'll be available to you, but only for one objective. After that, you will no longer be able to use this character.

Also, I need some input. I was thinking about putting a conquest mode in, but I need some input on what I should do. Please read the poll above and let me know.

it depends how much more space it will be to dl conquestlol...no but ide like kotor

Yikes - first really big snag. I'm pretty sure I've found a limit to the number of regions the game will allow - and it doesn't look like there's a memory pool I can set to increase it, either. I'm near the end of the scripting, but I've now got a small, finite number of regions to use for scripting (and for those not familiar with scripting objective-type maps, regions are vital, because - at least for me - the OnEnterRegion trigger is the one I use most often).

well, dosnt final fantasy come in more than 1 disc? why dont u just split the game in half in two maps. then u can delete the regions in the second one that u used in the first one. just an idea lol

plokoon761 wrote:well, dosnt final fantasy come in more than 1 disc? why dont u just split the game in half in two maps. then u can delete the regions in the second one that u used in the first one. just an idea lol

Actually, the idea had come up. If I weren't so close to finishing this (I should be able to finish it in one map), then I would probably end up splitting the map into two different assault maps - it would work, too, because I could use the save function to carry over the data from one map to the next.