omfg i actually wrote a design brief before ranting about the next big mod >;o Thread

ok so it might not be the next big mod... but for once rather than just blurting out random idea's i wrote a design brief!! now read, and be compelled to help me!!!

The Mod Plan.

What is the mod?

- the mod is a Multiplayer Team based ATB (active time battle), based in the combined final fantasy worlds, combining characters, hero's, villains, and infamous monsters from across the series, plus some characters from different games and genre's, but mainly focusing on FF.

What game are you modding?

- i am planning on taking advantage of the source engine in a way that people havent seen before.

How will the mod work as a multiplayer?

- Players will select a server, and join. to participate, they simply chose which character they wish to use, and join the fray. you may only join before a battle has started, or after it has finnished. the atb meter fills over time for each player, and when full, the player can activate any ability they can perform. this is also how the monster attacks, it has its own invisible atb meter. this way, players dont need to wait for each other to decide their activities, and hold up the game. people will have the freedom to wait untill a key moment to use an ability, or use it right away, its their own choice, but is all happening in realtime on the server. also, at some point i would like to have the option of a PVP challange where people can battle each other in this turn based environment, either alone, in teams, or in handicap battles.

How will the Characters balance out?

- Players will have individual strengths and weaknesses, these arent always going to be exactly oposite. a character may be skilled in both close quarter, and magical combat, but may be weak in ranged attacks, or have a lower health rating. there will also be a "point" system in place. whereby before joining a server, you set up your character. you have (for example only) 200 points, which can be spent on upgrading attributes, "learning" spells, upgrading weapons and armour etc. also, i have thought of adding bonus points to certain monster defeats, but not sure on implimenting this yet. so more updates to follow.

How will the monsters strength compare to the players?

- The monsters will each have 3 different dificulty levels, easy, medium, and hard. of course each monster will be easyer or harder than each other as well. the monsters difficulty will not change depending on the players or the amount of them, so if there are more players, it may well be too easy to win, so choose a tougher opponent

animations

- each character will have 2 attack animations, which on the attack command, will be selected at random, this might help with the boredom effect of watching the same attack over and over.

for the initial release, we will need the following animations for each player character are as follows:

idle
wounded idle
sitting (afk = immune)
attack 1 (includes sprinting toward enemy or w/e is "characteristic")
attack 2 (as above, just make it different)
magic 1
magic 2 (different animation, for high level spells)
use item
block
wounded block
being hit
blocking taking hit
wounded taking hit
KO (maybe take advantage of the physics engine for some nifty ragdoll effects?)
revival

Special Attacks

- rather than having special attacks, the limit break system, similar to FF8, whereby, if your health is low, or you are affected by certain spells/items, you may have a chance to use a limit break/special attack for that round, this will be determined by a chance generated by the AI (the lower your hp, the more likely you will be able to use it, or the higher the effect of the spell/item).

Locations

- although the mod is based arround the FF world, and i would like very much to keep some of the origional settings, such as the deep sea research post, for the ultima battle. i would also like a lot of self designed maps, designed to be very scenic, as this isnt a first person mod, we can really go to town on map details, and making everything look very pretty. the most important map i can think of, is some kind of ruined coluseum of some form. but ill do design sketches of that later.

Heroes.

- list of currently planned characters playable by characters.

Gattsu - Berserk (not in first release)
Squall - FF8
Cloud - FF7
Locke - FF6
Shadow and Intercepter - FF6
Garnet - FF9
Tifa - FF7
Character list to expand with further releases and design plans.

Monsters.

- list of enemies currently to be utilised in order of easyest to most dificult.

Common soldier x3 |
|
common soldier x2 +Leader } sharing the same model.
|
Special troops x3 |

Cactaurs

tonberry

The following will be unlocked by password entry, which you obtain by defeating the previous monster (the baby dragon is open from the start).
Baby Dragon

Teenage Dragon (All dragons may be fought in groups of 1, 2, or 3.)

Adult Dragon

tonberry king

Seifer

Kuja

Sephiroth

Trance Kuja

Final form Kefka

Bizarro Sephiroth (final form in northern crater)

Emerald Weapon

Ruby Weapon

Ultima Weapon

Omega Weapon
Monster list to expand on further releases and design plans.

Summon monsters WILL be implimented at some point. but as of the first release, i very much doubt it.

What i will need for the mod.

- Modeling:
As i myself can model and texture, i only need 1 more modeler and texture artist, which i have found, so for now the position is filled.

- Mapping: 1 vacancy
I need someone familiar with the source mapping tools (hammer??), who is artistically minded, with a good sense of vision, and the ability to improvise and build on ideas to create scenic environments.

- Programmer:
I need at least 1 programmer, and if that person feels able to work with another (i know sometimes you prefer to work alone), then we could get more. you must be familiar with the source engine and its abilities, you must be compitent, and able to twist the engine to our desires. you must also be able to, or point out someone who can; script scenes or video sequencial animations.

- concept artist: position filled.

oh and heres the model for guts im finishing off right now. sitting at just over 3500 triangles.

and the cactaur by Mr.Ray

Edited by: Almighty_gir

Well, I would very much inform you to go against trying to make a Final Fantasy mod, seeing as how I got an email from Square-Enix not too long ago telling me that mods based on their licenses are strictly illegal and they will take legal action if forced to.

You may want to just modify the mod a little so it's not based on Final Fantasy, and you should be fine

hehe yeah i was thinking about that, and in fairness it would be easy to just make it an all round turn based action game, but i like the idea of using popular, well known characters, as it draws in "fans" from each genre. so now im kinda confused on which direction to go...

sqeenix have got to be one of the most anal companies on earth >_>

Actually, Fox is the most anal company on Earth

You should try making an original cast of characters, really. That way, you could build them up and they'll become quite popular within the modding community. Nothing grants respect more than originality

so its ff:tactics on source atm?

or just spell final fantasy with one extra letter somewhere. they cant do anything about that and it would piss them off. awsome models though. you should show them in the pimping section too .

Yah copyright hounds will come down on you. Unless you call it say Finel Fabasy.......and change everything just enough so that its isnt a blatant rip off...

The Dude Guts sure does look like that dude that was in that one Dreamcast game. Its where he goes around slicing limbs off Demons I can't remember the name...

uh...it says in the design brief

hehe theres no way im going to deliberately try to avoid copyright, that makes it even worse on you! second, ive never played final fantasy tactics, so its hard for me to compare the two o_O

@'Karuto: i understand where your coming from, im a huge fan of origionality myself, and i do want to put some home brewed characters and monsters in. the only difficulty is, people are already starting to ask me on forums when the site will be up cos "x" is their fav ff character and yada yada, so in essence i already have a fan base growing... and why not build on that? maybe in a future release have competitions with fans designing their own characters to put into it or something?

heres some questions and answers from a different forum:

1) Is the emphasis on getting kills/frags or character building? If the latter, will there be a way to save characters?

well, im hoping the latter, but i have yet to devise a way to do this, cucumba helped with a few suggestions on aim, but he was talking coderspiel and i couldnt decypher a word of it hahaha

2) I'm a bit confused as to how the game works in terms of activating battles, is it like Final Fantasy Online with real time ATB or will there be no free movement like Final Fantasy Tactics?

you cannot run arround, rather... think of grandia 2. where if you want to move to a strategic position behind an enemy, you can, but it will take up your turn, and the time bar for your character rebuilds after your action. but each players time bar is independant from each other, so no one really needs to wait for one another, but its still turn based.

3) You said the game was going to based in a world similar to the FF world, but each FF game (X-2 notwithstanding) has a different world, would it be one of the worlds or a collaboration?

it will be more of a collaboration, as i said id like it to be based on, but at the same time i would like to have a lot of origional sceneries as well.

4) Do the players form parties like Diablo II or does it assume that all the players are in one big party (Bearing in mind the maxplayers are 32).

well, basically (and this is a rough plan), you would set up a server, and wait for people to join, you can then choose between each other which creatures you wish to fight in some kind of pre-game chat window (kinda like DoW i guess?)

5) Will you be keeping the same scale as HL2 (so maps can be made now )

um...? (was then clarified with this):
You know how the ESF team scaled everything down, like player models shrunk from 72 units (HL default) to 8 units tall to allow bigger maps. Bearing in mind the HL2 maps are 4x4x4 bigger than the HL maps, will you be scaling down player size or keeping the default, if default then maps can be made with the HL2 scale now and then used when the mod is ready.

the scaling.. well as far as i can see, i dont think the full size of the map will be used unless some rediculous amount of players are involved, and even then it wouldnt be the full map, baring in mind you wont be running around the map, itll just be a "scene". so standard scaling all round o/

6) Are monster encounters random or will you see the monsters before the fight occurs?

answered above in q4

7) Will there be a FF-style equipment system?

still working on that im afraid >;o

If you're going to start a mod like this. I'd be happy to help with a website. I like Final Fantasty (Of course a lot of people like it.)

By the way, Guts is the character from Beserk, a famous, albeit older, anime that is more Western-influenced (meaning more realistic, mature, bloody, etc.)

i know who guts is, ive been re-re-re-rereading the manga for so long >_<.

like i said, i dont want it just to be final fantasy based.. but definately influenced by. i also have a model of Zoddo, made by on Mr.Smo, who is kindly donating it to go with guts >;]

so...any more suggestions? does anyone know where i would find a programmer?

I'm sorry, I should've said that the comment was directed towards AdrianShephard

I say go with more of a Devil May Cry 2 take on things (but much better) where you can do all of these fancy, over-the-top moves with both guns and swords, while earning experience points to boost your stats for that round only, sort of like money in Cstrike.

i dont play counterstrike, i can instantly tell thats not the kinda game i enjoy. ive been in the marines, so playing games like CS is kinda weird... and makes me shout at the screen about how things like that would never happen >_<

im liking your DMC idea though, maybe you could elaborate?

hey, im a mapper, maybe i could be of some help, when u get all your ideas settled, email me at Edenmoon96@yahoo.com

Well, you start off the round with a set number of points. You open this buy menu (which code is actually found on the web, although I forget where), and you can buy all of these different stat boosters and weapons. You can buy guns, swords, hammers, axes, etc. You can also add Damage, Agility, Armor, Health, and perhaps even purchase spells and special moves (like limit breaks from FF7) to unleash Hell upon your opponents. You could also make it over-the-top, with huge, almost cartoonish weapons and moves, with attacks that cause lots of damage and whatnot. You could also put them into huge, destructable environments that shows off the power of each character.

It'd be fun Just make sure you give them enough time to buy things, and you'll be fine. Of course, if this sounds too ambitious, I say just go for the stats amplifier, because that in and of itself could be pretty popular on the mod scene.

it sounds like more than i could design on my own >;o oh yeah, heres a picture of the OLD OLD OLD sephiroth model i made (and someone else skinned, by the name of Kama) which im gonna remake from scratch for this mod. and i guarentee people will dig the new version

That is a beautiful model - do you have a mod profile yet...that I can click the little "watch this mod" button on yet?

i wanna map for you guys, email me at edenmoon96@yahoo.com

ill send you an email, but right now my main concern is finding a programmer... they are really few and far between...