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Here's some questions I have received before regarding this hack, and some I thought up to ask myself.

Q. Why did you make the extended intro unplayable/can't move text along?

A. It's supposed to be like the ending movie, but an opening one. There's also a non-controllable mid-game (end of the WoB) movie-like event as well. These are there quite simply for you to watch and not to play. We decided to code it that way when making the event and to change it so you can advance the dialog boxes at this point would be basically re-working the whole thing and I'm not interested in doing that. At least there's an option at the start of a new game to skip it.

Q. Why is Professor Oak in the hack?

A. Back when this hack was first started sometime in like...2009, before it was 'RotDS', it was called 'Last Hope' and sucked far worse. Anyways, due to some heavy corruption I could not use the dialog editor at all, so I had to hex edit all text stuff. I changed the name of Cid into Oak because it was easy and doable, and used a slightly edited Arvis sprite for him. Then it just stuck, and eventually we did an authentic Oak sprite and decided to keep it. I'm not a Pokemon fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, I gave up after the Red one on Gameboy, which admittedly I did really enjoy. I do however like the idea of an alternate reality Oak doing dark experiments -- he is a professor of Pokemon in Pokemon, but a professor of Espers in this hack. Works for me!

Q. Why is Cloud, or 'X' character in the hack?

A. Characters was pretty much the first thing that was done back when first starting this hack, and back then there wasn't all that many complete, quality sprites to choose from let alone mesh together well palette-wise. I'm not a hardcore Cloud fan, or a FF7 'fanboy', I don't dress up like Cloud and go to cosplays, they were just available as characters at the time and I figured I could work him in easily enough in Locke's place, using Bushido (Limit). Same with the other crossovers for the most part like Tifa, Eiko... they were available as sprites that all worked well together sharing the various palettes, and I figured they would be easy to swap in and have their appropriate skills portrayed accurately, and went with it.

Q. Is this a "serious" hack?

A. Yes, it's a serious hack that takes itself very lightly at times. Humor is important to me and hard to resist implementing. It does contain a lot of random bosses, references, and some 'stoner' humor... but it's not a parody hack at all. I just used a bunch of random video games and themes that I am familiar with and threw them in the blender...which more or less resulted in a crossover hack. But, the main story alterations are supposed to be taken seriously, which I hope becomes somewhat obvious towards the end of the first half of the game. The goal was for it to be an entertaining experience, and I am totally aware that meshing all these characters together results in something that makes no real sense at all. If possible, try to think of it like some bizarre parallel world or alternate reality to FF6.

As stated in the readme:
It is a highly personalized modification of the original game and therefore naturally won't appeal to everyone. It's not a sequel or a prequel or a remake to FF6, it is just a massive mod and customization of FF6. If you go into it thinking like this I am sure you will have a much more enjoyable experience than expecting some high quality re-take on the game and coming out feeling disappointed.

Q. Why are the overworld maps changed, but not the other ones?

A. I myself am not good with map editing, or rather creating entirely new maps... the thought of creating whole new legit town and dungeon maps is daunting to say the least. It would take lots and lots of more time, time of which I don't personally have anymore. Hopefully someday there will be some or many new maps, maybe someone will volunteer as Lockirby did for the overworlds, in which I would be happy to do all the other changes required to get the maps up and running.

Q. For what purpose did you change the town names?

A. As an incentive to do new town maps someday lol. Since this won't be happening for who knows how long, I guess just to switch up the flavor a bit. Changing just the name of something is basically pointless though I do realize. Also I must apologize for changing the town names again and again between versions... naming stuff is hard! Until there is a "final" version, this is something that is likely to continue.

Q. What would you do differently if you could start over fresh again?

A. Probably opt to have a 100% original cast of playable characters.

Q. Why are the characters so much like the vanilla ones still?

A. It's fairly tough, without changing up the event structure more as a whole. I admit, Aurora is much like Terra still, I found that there wasn't a need to change it all that much personality-wise, since they both are still half-esper etc. and follow the same exact course of events. Obviously some characters required more of a makeover than others, like Locke to Cloud, Setzer to Otis... but for ones like Terra, Celes, Sabin, the new characters taking their spots just kinda fit the same way... They aren't carbon copies of the vanilla characters hopefully, but yes they could still use work to further differentiate. I'd like to think that for the most part the majority of them seem fresh.

Q. Why is Arc nothing like Arc the Onion Knight from the FF3 Remake?

A. Because he is not supposed to be that same Arc. Both SSJ Rick and I, who decided on his name, had no idea about the FF3 remake or Square naming one of the Onion Knights Arc, believe it or not. I've debated changing his name to something else just for this reason, but in the end Arc is the most fitting name for him we can imagine and everyone's used to it by now.

Q. Pretty much all the monsters have their own unique sprites, so why are there still some duplicate monster sprites?

A. Unfortunately the sprite editor, which was customized and expanded to allow for more bytes/sprites, has a terrible bug that is basically unfixable at the moment, where it won't allow us to go past a certain amount of bytes/space without removing the esper sprites at the end of the sprite data, like a snake eating itself, even though we have more than enough room... It's very sad, we had plans for all the rest and even opted to remove all the monster's shadows in order to have the last couple ones that were done and very much wanted.

Q. Do you consider yourself a good writer?

A. Somewhat, I used to enjoy writing back in school, does that count? But no, I'm not on a professional level. I enjoy writing, but it's nothing I'd consider a true skill. The dialog in this hack is not a candidate for a Pullet Surprise, but I tried! And thanks to SSJ Rick for going way out of his way to make it as good as we can.

Q. Who is your favorite character in the hack?

A. Probably Arc. He is the most original and I'm surprised how well his whole story and events worked out as a whole. I'd like to at some point add more completion and depth to him in terms of what might of happened to his father, and forgiving 'you know who'. Besides his story, I enjoy him in combat very much thanks to his updated Runic. Besides Arc, I also really like Reaper and Otis.

Q. What exactly did you, Gi Nattak, do for this hack?

A. I created the mod itself, basically I lead the project and am responsible for any decision-making and the majority of the story elements. I did the majority of the music, dialog, and event work - back when the first event work was being done, all the event work was done by Angelo, but once he couldn't work on it any longer I took up the reins. I finished and expanded more on his and eventually moved on to do much larger ones of my own, as well as the tons of smaller event tweaks throughout the mod. These v2.0 days SSJ Rick helps out a lot with new story/event ideas as well as dialog, so big thanks to him. Lord Envoy did the major new battle script work for many bosses, but I get down on many as well. I have nothing to do with anything sprite related except in strange cases like the overworld mini maps. I did all the items and item descriptions, spell naming and editing, and other incredibly tedious ventures such as adding in the Rage descriptions, monster stats/balancing...

Q. Will this hack work on my cell phone's SNES emulator?

A. As long as the emulator supports ExHiROM (up to 8MB ROM size) then it should.

Q. Will version 2.X be the last version?

A. I highly doubt it. We already have plans and lots of material for a future version 3.0, but it will be a long time if at all before that time comes. There will most likely be some kind of smaller update(s) before then.

Anybody got a Q for me? Please ask away!


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(01-14-2016, 06:17 PM)Gi Nattak Wrote: Q. Why the hell is Professor Oak in the hack? Were you high!?

A. First of all, yes probably, secondly and more important, back when this hack was first started, before it was 'RotDS', it was called 'Last Hope' and sucked far worse. Anyways, due to some heavy corruption I could not use the dialog editor at all, so I had to hex edit all text stuff. I changed the name of Cid into Oak because it was easy and doable. Then it just stuck, and eventually we did an Oak sprite and decided to keep it. I'm not a Pokemon lover by any stretch of the imagination, I gave up after the Red one on Gameboy -- I do however like the idea of an alternate reality Oak doing dark experiments. It seems to work imo, he is a professor of Pokemon in Pokemon, but a professor of espers in this hack. Works for me, I don't see what the big deal is...?

When I first played this (not that I finished yet-College is a pain) I was a little like "Wtf?" when I saw Oak in this. It would have made a LOT more sense if he was just kidnapped by the Empire, but it does look like he "enjoyed this thing a bit too much"- or maybe that was just me when I first read it. My memory is vague.

(01-14-2016, 06:17 PM)Gi Nattak Wrote: Q. Why are the characters so much like the vanilla ones still?

A. It's tough, without changing up the event structure more as a whole. I admit, Aurora is much like Terra still, I found that there wasn't a need to change it all that much personality-wise, since they both are still half-esper etc. and follow the same exact course of events lol. Obviously some characters required more of a makeover than others, like Locke to Cloud, Setzer to Otis... but for ones like Terra, Celes, Sabin, the new characters taking their spots just kinda fit the same way... They aren't carbon copies of the vanilla characters hopefully, but yes they could still use work to further differentiate. I'd say for the most part, the majority of them seem fresh and original.
I'm glad you realized this, I was gonna say it in the chat but I realized I would look very rude. It isn't in my heart to offend you in any way, but most of the characters verge in the carbon copy territory. Aurora is Terra, Serin is Edgar, Astral is Banon and Ronan is Sabin. Oboro is similar but otherwise fairly enough different from Shadow. Even though Arc's dialogue is obviously not Gau's, there are still instances of the kid jumping around buildings in Zozo, or in the weakened pose (all-fours to Gau, makes sense, weakened for Arc, not a lot of sense). One time where I found the similarities striking was at the start of the Opera scene, where the "I'm-serious-and-not-interested" Cloud cheerfuly talks with the Impresario and Tifa acts exactly like Celes did then. It probably looks better later in the game, but early game the similarities can be kinda distracting.
As I type this I realize you will hate me with all your heart. I'm annoying, I know. I can't help it. I guess I can tell you I'm enjoying this hack and it's helping me develop mine a lot (what I want/don't want in my hack, "if this can be done I guess I can do this too", etc).

Now because you asked for it

Q. Why does the Metal Gear protecting Glow City(?, the bad guys' HQ) not look like any Metal Gear machine in the Metal Gear series and instead looks like Crawler?
Q. How come Mr. Grimm shares the same look with Reaper? I actually thought he was fighting me for some reason.
Q. This one's actually me, lacking the sense of balance in games: Why did you remove level averaging, if Espers do not grant stat bonuses upon level up? I've just recruited Mog, and now I can't really use any of my other team members because their level is too low, and I'm not too fond of grinding ._.
Q. How can Finn stay toe-on-toe with GILGAMESH? ...I'm not a super fan of Adventure Time, but I'd say without Jake he couldn't stand Gilgy for too long lol
Q. How did Sephiroth let Kefka kill Aeris instead of him being the killer...lol
O. Why is Terra one of the early-game espers? I thought she was able to defeat the God of Magic. Woudln't it make sense if she was like, a late-game Esper or, lol, the replacement for Crusader?

I hope you don't take any offense on what I've said...


Step forward, spriters! We are also responsible to make hacks look new and fresh, we are no less important than code or ASM hackers! CHARGE!!
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Quote:Q. How come Mr. Grimm shares the same look with Reaper? I actually thought he was fighting me for some reason.


My 2 cents on running out of battle character sprites


Quote:Q. How can Finn stay toe-on-toe with GILGAMESH? ...I'm not a super fan of Adventure Time, but I'd say without Jake he couldn't stand Gilgy for too long lol
Jake is strong, but even Finn is skilled, he also managed to beat the Lich alone in the first fight(like the final boss of second season)


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(01-15-2016, 07:39 AM)Kugawattan Wrote: Now because you asked for it

Q. Why does the Metal Gear protecting Glow City(?, the bad guys' HQ) not look like any Metal Gear machine in the Metal Gear series and instead looks like Crawler?
Q. How come Mr. Grimm shares the same look with Reaper? I actually thought he was fighting me for some reason.
Q. This one's actually me, lacking the sense of balance in games: Why did you remove level averaging, if Espers do not grant stat bonuses upon level up? I've just recruited Mog, and now I can't really use any of my other team members because their level is too low, and I'm not too fond of grinding ._.
Q. How can Finn stay toe-on-toe with GILGAMESH? ...I'm not a super fan of Adventure Time, but I'd say without Jake he couldn't stand Gilgy for too long lol
Q. How did Sephiroth let Kefka kill Aeris instead of him being the killer...lol
O. Why is Terra one of the early-game espers? I thought she was able to defeat the God of Magic. Woudln't it make sense if she was like, a late-game Esper or, lol, the replacement for Crusader?

I hope you don't take any offense on what I've said...

1) The Metal Gear boss/guard I borrowed the name from only, as a loose reference to the bad-ass machine. The previous sprite, before I replaced it with the Crawler one, had more of a Metal Gear-ish look to it. I might change the name for it for the next version, this isn't the first time I've heard this question about it.

2) Yes this is as Tenkarider said, just ran out of good NPC to expand or swap to get Grimm his own sprite. At the same time though, they are both identical in look because they are both Soul Takers/Grim Reapers, so while it sucks to have them share sprites, it makes since. In the latest 1.4.3 version I at least was able to add his name (Mr. Grimm) to the battle, which was tricky. But that helps to know it isn't Reaper you are fighting, besides that the story has set it up to make it somewhat obvious.

3) I removed level averaging basically because of the random stat gains on level up - these stat point gains on level up are not gained on level averaging, so I wanted to give the player the chance to level them up and receive these stat increases. Sometimes I kept in the level averaging, for instance for Oboro, and with this latest version I put it back on Aurora when you get her back at Zozo, but for most other occasions it was removed. For Mog, you bring up a good point, I should probably have kept it on him as well... or wait, are you saying his level is too high? I'm confused a bit because you say the other party members level is now too low?

4) Just for the lolz pretty much, Gilgy seems like a good matchup for Finn imo, but really I didn't think about the actual matchup, I just thought it was a cool little scene to have.

5) Because Sephy isn't in this hack. I am using Cloud and Aerith in an event but that doesn't necessarily mean I need to go full-blown FF7 with it. For instance Final Fantasy Tactics has Cloud and Aerith in a scene together, but no Sephiroth. It WAS thought about, but I just wanted her to die in a new way, by a new villain, which is the main villain of this game lol.

6) I found the sprite and thought it was a cool, as well as a homage and obvious reference to the original game.


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I find that Aurora is slightly different from Terra in terms of personality. Aurora has a bit more teeth; she occasionally mocks other characters IIRC, something that Terra really doesn't do. I never really saw Arc's weak pose as being on all fours either, but maybe that's just me.


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I went ahead and kept Arc jumping down from Zozo, for instance, because it just seems like a childish thing to do. So I let that ride. His Weak pose might be based on Gau's, I'm not sure. It probably is similar in the sense that they are both child sprites.

As for the other characters, I'd like to think Serin is more aloof and immature at times than Edgar is. I remember a lot of dialog work going into him. Again, I think it's mostly because of how the events are still played out the same that makes these characters seem so similar, in some cases at least. Like Serin still being the King as Edgar was. But in his case, I'd say while Edgar was like a perverted british noble king, Serin is more of a ragtag playboy and irresponsible leader.

My half-assed breakdown of the others:

Aurora, very similar. Some dialog was changed for her, some not. I'd say they are very similar, but Aurora is a little less...juvenile? And less scared, timid.

Tifa, same personality as Celes. I couldn't really find a good way to make her less like Celes and more like Tifa. The events didn't need a big change for her imo.

Avalon is a vastly different character than Cyan is, imo. For the obvious reason of not talking Old English, and being younger.

Otis...much different obviously.

Ronan...much too similar.

Cloud, took a lot of work, and I hear still seems like Locke at times, but I don't see it really. I did about all one could do to change him from Locke to Cloud, so I dunno.

Eiko, same as Relm but a little more attitude even. They are very similar characters so it was more of a simple swap. I have not played IX enough to know about her, so yes I kept the majority of Relm in-tact.

Fusoya, Had to keep a lot of Strago in there, but hopefully he seems less goofy and more ancient.

Oboro, since he has much more dialog it was easier to flesh out his character. He should seem like a different personality from Shadow, but yes they are both badass ninja dudes with dogs. I'd compare Oboro more to Shadow's Clyde personality, which was different and less emotionless than his Shadow counterpart.

Arc, shouldn't resemble Gau at all, except for the actions at times, yes.

Golbez, much different from Gogo lol.

Shadow, doesn't say anything and I changed up his events so he shouldn't seem like Umaro the squatch, aside from in-battle when he tosses an ally at a monster...


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Naturally, there's still some work to be done to flesh out the new characters a little more, but that's to be expected in a mod, where the base game is heavily used as a template... that said, I do feel that most of the new characters do kind of have their own style even though their overall situation is still fairly similar to the vanilla character they replace. For example, as LK already mentioned, Aurora already has way more personality than brick wall terra ever did. Serin, who is probably my favorite of the original cast, is delightfully disconnected from reality at almost all times, and yet somehow has the ability (or the luck) to come through in the clutch when things get serious-time.

As far as borrowed characters go, yeah some of them dont quite seem themselves just yet, but there's been quite an improvement in that area in basically every subsequent release. Cloud for example has come a long way since 1.0. And Fusoya/Golbez, I think, were basically perfect from the get-go.
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I had some questions;

How often do you play your own hack since you released it?
What was the most unexpected challenge you had while creating your hack?
Do you find that some bosses or scripted enemies too easy because you innately know the strategy intended to defeat them?
What, if any, are the more surprising complaints about your hack?
Is there any Easter Eggs people have left unnoticed? Like a secret boss or item.
What's your favorite team compilation for your hack?
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(04-13-2016, 06:00 PM)Odbarc Wrote: I had some questions;

How often do you play your own hack since you released it?
What was the most unexpected challenge you had while creating your hack?
Do you find that some bosses or scripted enemies too easy because you innately know the strategy intended to defeat them?
What, if any, are the more surprising complaints about your hack?
Is there any Easter Eggs people have left unnoticed? Like a secret boss or item.
What's your favorite team compilation for your hack?

Yay, questions!

1) Since releasing the initial version over a year ago, I have been playing it quite a lot still mainly due to the fact that I've never stopped working on it, so constant testing and playing is being done on my part. With the release of 1.4.3 a while back, I played through pretty much the whole thing legit, with no max-stats and items like I usually do for testing, and I created save states along the way for accurate play. I fire up the ROM quite often and just to touch up and polish various things I notice, bug hunting or just to go through certain parts or whatever if I'm feeling it. But I don't play it start to finish since that 1.4.3.

2) Good question! Let's see, an unexpected challenge... Well, I'd have to jokingly say when Angelo stopped working on the hack due to real life stuff like work, because there was a bunch of loose event work left to work on and fix up, and I wasn't all that good with events at all back then, as he was anyway. So this forced me to pick it up and learn how to event edit on his level.

3) As the creator of the hack and having inside knowledge about how they work? Yes, certainly to some extent. Some of the bosses I've heard that are really difficult for some, having such intel on when and what to look out for or use can make short work of them without much trouble. Like the Lava Demon boss, or the flying Skulls after the Magitek Factory, the Soul Eater, and many more. Although, I'd like to think they are challenging even with prior knowledge coming in with a strategy, especially after the last and next release where more work was thrown into most boss scripts.

4) Haha. Well one is always that it's too hard in an unfair cheap way with some of the tougher bosses. I'd say another is that the regular maps remain unchanged while the overworlds are different, which I can understand more as wishful thinking. Some of the characters still seem like their old counterparts at times... I think I'll stop there! Those aren't exactly very surprising, though... I'll say a surprising one that I've heard, is that the "stolen" music isn't as fitting or good as the original soundtrack, which is surprising to me because of course it's not as good as the original but who the hell cares since it's a hack and my intent was to change it all. I'm sure there's something better but that's all that's coming to mind.

5) No, I think there isn't anything too cryptic or secretly hid in an attempt to keep it hidden that hasn't been found or known of. I thought about doing something like that though before.

6) My favorite team once everyone of them are obtainable, would be: Arc, Avalon, Otis, FuSoYa. Although it's very hard to choose. Eiko is great to have, as is Aurora, or Golbez. I usually just choose my favorite characters instead of the strongest possible team in RPGs. So I'd probably have Oboro there a lot too. I like to change up my party a lot and spread the love out.

7) OK so I just realized that 'team compilation' means something totally different that what I momentarily thought it to be, before answering, so I'll let that stay and answer here now that my favorite team effort done to this hack...it's tough, I really liked working along with Lockirby to get his overworld maps up and running and doing the mini-map to match it, that was a lot of fun and felt great to get that mammoth endeavor completed. I also enjoyed of course thinking out in great detail some of the events, working on them with Angelo. Brainstorming tons of ideas with Poco Loco lol...talking over the phone with him and Lord Envoy planning out some custom bosses that we all had a hand in creating. Then semi-recently planning out map objects and monster sprites & espers with James, although that was all him spriting them up of course, but still a fun team effort nonetheless for sure. A possible future favorite team effort would be working with Jackimus to create a whole new Opera Scene, where he would be doing an original piece (with lyrics) of epic proportions and I going to town on a matching event.

So to sum up that, I'd have to consider all these favorites and it's impossible to choose... So I'll say it was working with Edrin and William Kage briefly to get William Kage's songs into Children of Vector! That was pretty epic. What?!
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Q1: If you'd have to do something different in your hack, what would it be?

Q2: When will you consider your mod finished?

Q3: Would you consider an easy-type version of your mod something worth doing, or better, implementing levels of difficulty in the same ROM (different copies of item data, monster stats, exp curve, etc...)?
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