Final Fantasy 6 Alternative Universe project (Latest update: 02 06 2015)

Alright, it was (quite) some time since I did any FF6 modding, and I wanted to start up a new project of sorts.

Before making this thread, I brushed up on things like event editing and made a base that fully removed the player from using the Magitek armour, since I personally like it, but only for the enemy to use.

In this project, I'm changing the playable cast (Everyone but Setzer, Gau, Relm and Umaro.) as well as this, I'm changing their abilities, what they can and cannot equip and having an enforced spell set for each character.

The magic system is being redone with new elements being introduced (such as earth and wind) and espers are now used by a particular character for their special skill. (I was researching this before and I can't remember if I got it working, but the character would have the summon command and it would summon the equipped magicite.)

Enemies are being changed both visually and are having their AI reworked.

As well as the overworld, town and dungeon maps (focus on overworld edits, but varying to the town and dungeon maps.)

For instance, I'm using aspects of dungeons to create new ones, such as for Figaro, instead of moving the castle, we need to go through a cave to get to the other side.

In terms of story changes, it's being changed to be darker than the original game, but with my limited event editing, I'm not sure how extensive the actual event changes will be, but certain events are being restructured, such as the Narshe battle being done as a distraction for the original Locke scenario so he can sneak into Figaro.

I don't have a name for it yet, but I'm working on this and I'll post screens and updates when I can.

In terms of progress, I have different amounts of sprites, scripts and internal aspects scattered across different files, but I'm unifying them and making edits to form a more cohesive game as a whole.

(I had some issues before, such as after editing the maps, I ended up messing up the game and lost progress there, and due to my (absurd) number of backups, its now almost impossible to tell which one is more complete than the others. xD)

I don't have much time to work on it today, but I have the whole day tomorrow to work on it.


---Edit 02.06.2015---

A new video update.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZxT44h0veU

In terms of progress, I was doing more 'misc' things, such as further mapping out the world, trying to figure out who joins and when (Banon is more of a recurring guest character) as well as finding out if certain things were feasible.

I got several new enemy sprites and finetuned them to be closer to the original design and palettes of what I replaced them with.

I'm trying to dabble with new animations, which are quite fun to try to create entirely new spell animations, I won't go overboard with it, but I'll try to get some new interesting graphics for the player spells if nothing else.

I am currently calibrating how strong the enemies are, the current formula I'm using is that common enemies are 2.5 times stronger in HP, MP, Magic and strength, while their defenses are 1.25 times higher and seeing how that works for the first few areas in the game.

I was doing more testing with battle and field events and other misc things.

Sounds cool! i hope you'll be able to accomplish your project.

Alright, and this is the basic list of the playable cast.

FF6 project cast
Terra - Daryl (Recoloured and this is my own spritesheet for her)
Locke - Clyde (Used with permission from Poco Loco)
Cyan - Draco (Poco Loco created it, though I didn't officially ask for permission yet.)
Shadow - Arvis (Used with permission from Poco Loco)
Edgar - Alicia (My custom Celes)
Sabin - Adair (recoloured Wedge / Biggs from a now unregistered user)
Celes - Alexis (recoloured Lorial from a now unregistered user)
Strago - Banon
Relm - Relm
Setzer - Setzer
Mog - Yuki (White version of esper Terra)
Gau - Gau
Gogo - Gestahl (Place holder)
Umaro - Umaro
Banon (Guest)
Leo - Gerald (Edgar looks good in that palette!)
Ghost - Ghost

the Kappa is now also the Returner (Poco Loco) and is being used in the new distraction to let Clyde get into Figaro.

For this, I am also using Tin Man's general Kefka (with permission) and I'm not not sure, for 2 of the main cast, they were being used with permission from another user, but that user seems to... be gone now.

their profile says they're unregistered...

I have some other updates I could post right now, but I don't want to give away too much about the changes.

I'll give a new boss example, in it, we have the tentacles from the castle's engine room being used as a new boss in a forest where there's a main boss (a big flower) and the tentacles are now ivy that constricts and captures the team, and this boss is going to be confronted during the scenarios instead of the train. (Which saves me SO MUCH space for different sprites!)

Edit:

I have a couple screenshots to show you.

Well, not technically screenshots, but its an image. =P



This is the wip Figaro area, it's going to be between 2 rivers and to the top left, we can cross a bridge to go to Kolington instead of having to transport the castle, and if we go down and to the right, we can go to the normal cave.

As for the forest, I'm wanting to try something out to see if I CAN do it, which is to terraform the normal mountains and keep all of the same exits and whatnot, and merely make it a forest instead of a mountain.

---

This was the main cast, but actually looking at the image on the forum, I realized I didn't need to make it... so big. I'll upload a smaller one later.

I just spent the last 4 hours racking my brain trying to find out why the monsters sprites were messed up for ones I didn't even alter.

After extensive testing of my various backups, it turns out that using the improvement patch scrambles quite a few monster sprites. (When I first joined here, people were telling me to use that as the absolute base for any projects since it fixed so many bugs ingame.)

So, I ended up having to get my fresh file and go one by one and export and import each monster sprite in order to correct it.

...Which took quite some time, but I fixed it. =3

...And then I found out I fixed my 2nd backup out of 17. (Hits head against the wall)

So now I need to fix the monster sprites again or redo all of my other progress. =P

Progress so far:
I have the spritesheets for the main characters done (I had to redo parts of several spritesheets, such as Daryl in order to fix her coat, or adding sleeves to the soldiers.

I renamed all of the playable characters and assigned their abilities according to their role.

Ie, Clyde is the new Locke, and as a thief, he is able to steal and he has a toolkit, which he would presumably use for all of his thieving purposes. (Instead of Edgar having it.)

Elyssa has the Seiken (Shock) ability and the Decree (Control) as she is a queen and would presumably have respect among enemies to the point that they say 'Dood, she's a queen, I gotta do what she says.'

Out of my other changes, there are 5 magic elements, and they are Fire, Ice, Thunder, Earth and Wind, and there's 5 people who are capable of using magic.

Magic is also taught by equipping weapons and armour, the way it is now is that offensive abilities is through the weapon, and defensive ones are either through armour or relics.

I also got a notepad setup of the default equipment and I divided it in full among who can use what (weapons are unique per person with nothing being shared) while armour was put into categories; there's 3 main ones of robes, light armour and heavy armour and based on each person's background and role, they are able to use suitable ones.

As well as this, I have several unique pieces of armour that directly relates to what each person is actually wearing to serve as the default and ultimate armour.

For Daryl, her base armour is a 'Leather Coat' and its flavour text mentions how its worn in from years of service and is unsuitable for actual combat.

Whereas her ultimate armour is currently being decided for the name, since I had an idea but unsure if it might be seen as offensive, which was 'Gestapo Coat' and I also considered 'Bancho Jacket' (a bancho is a gang leader) or simply 'Imperial Coat'.

Note, I am Jewish and my grandmother was in a concentration camp.

I fully divided up the magic among the magic users and decided on which spell is learnt from which piece of equipment.

I added in several custom weapons (Poco Loco's Gun and Throwing Knives) and personally modified every one of Yuki's weapons to resemble icicles.

I wrote the dialogue in full up to Figaro Castle.

Some misc things and spent ages trying to find out why the monster sprites weren't working. =P

In terms of immediate progress, I need to finish sorting the monster sprites on the newest version of the project and do some testing, after that, I'll try to fix anything wrong and try to dabble lightly in event editing, just to start, I'll fix the prologue.

Ie, make Daryl do certain actions and switch places with Biggs so that she's the 'leader'.

not a bad rework, you can use Draco by all means, as for Clyde that was created by Odbarc (the one I sent to you, I just tweaked it a bit)

as for the biggs/wedge that was created by our dearly missed friend Edrin

I would also suggest using my thief/baram sprite if you want, but thats just a suggestion

good luck to you

Can't use Baram, as in my universe, he was kinda killed in Clyde's background.

(They were caught and surrendered, but Figaro decided to try something and offered one a clean slate and full citizenship in Figaro if they would rat the other one out, Clyde accepted, and Baram was held solely responsible for train robbing, put in jail and jails back then aren't very nice and roughly 60% of inmates end up starving to death.

And an update!

I have a video of the prologue (I accidentally inserted the old script and not the new one, and this was loaded using a backup just before I broke my file after I tried to change the Tritoch battle event.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyCVHgM5...e=youtu.be

I was also working more on the maps (Such as Making Figaro grass based, which looks exactly the same, other than having grass instead of sand, kinda underwhelming for a picture. xD) and I was also working on the map outside Figaro some more.



As well as this, I fully sorted out the spells by renaming them and I changed 14 spells into new ones, such as the Earth and Wind spells and a new spell tier for each one.

I spent more time also working out what I plan on doing for the story progression, and currently I'm trying to see how feasible it is to try to change the tilesets of the world of ruin into something closer to the Floating Continent, as I'm strongly considering making the Floating Continent the 'secondary' world and it'll have several towns (all deserted save for a few individuals who are either merchant, bosses or offer important information on where the Goddesses are.)

Aha, then I'll adjust Clyde's credits then to mention Odbarc.

What happened to Edrin?

It's too long, as intro which still hasn't too much stuff to show.
The first impression has its importance...
It's best to wait some time before showing an intro, maybe after you implement more stuff.

99% of the things I included thus far was mainly visually (main character sprites, new spells animations, etc) and partly the reason I showed the intro was to show an issue I had with an event, which isn't a huge thing.

I was talking to someone on Skype about how even after I changed who the camera was centred on, it still focused on original Daryl even after their code suggestion and I figured I'd also showcase the initial event changes of no m-trek armour and I successfully got Daryl to be the lead rather than Biggs and show mildly what the script was going to be, since I also didn't upload any videos to YouTube for 3(?) weeks now.

Floating continent as the 2nd world... could be fun. Just seems like to many fun/creative possibilities to leave it mostly unpopulated though. Would be a great place for: mindless cultist, crazy cannibals, psyco criminals, or maybe a village full of mutant moogles...

Just a thought, I think it would be fun to see anyway.

Aha, when I said 'mostly deserted', I meant the only people there are ones that the villain saw fit as being allowed to live in his new world.

So instead of just random NPCs walking around that just say things like 'How do you do?' or "I wish my boyfriend would write more!" we only have the essential characters.

...Which mostly involves crazies with a few sane people thrown in, such as one town was going to be a town for where he kept his prisoners.

And by second world, I meant we're able to go between the surface world and the new world by talking to Setzer on the bridge.

But the airship can't handle going any higher than that, so they're only able to set foot on one part of the floating continent, with the rest of the exploration being either on foot, or after they recover a crashed airship (maybe, not decided on this yet.) which is used to go between different islands on the floating continent.

Other ideas I had for it is that the final dungeon is the normal floating continent level (slightly different though.) and after the scene with Kefka, he moves the Goddesses, which in turn causes a rift in time and space and creates Kefka Tower on the FC, and we need to talk to Gestahl to go past the point of no return and go into the final-final dungeon of Kefka's Tower.

Sounds wild enough to be interesting, yet solid enough to be a story.

Makes me think about my favorite part of FFV, the two worlds merging at the end for the final world map. Which does bring up another point, are you gonna have the floating "second world" rise during the game or is it already there at the start? Forgive me if you already said that, I'm tired.

Anyway, the reason I ask is, if it is rising, I know you can do a bit check and change world map tiles based on that. (I never tried it, but I've seen the code that removes the sealed gate landmass after the floating island rises in vanilla, shouldn't be difficult to modify to work with a bigger chunk of map). If done right, could sorta give you three world maps (a WoB, a ripped out WoB, and the the second world of the floating island).

Not sure if it would work in the same manor for a large portion of the base map without issues but its a thought if that is your intended route.

And the more I think about it, psyco cannabilistic moogles stranded on a floating island... just sounds like fun.