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25th & 10th Anniversary Challenge

#1
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In honor of FF6's 25th Anniversary, and FF6 Hacking's 10th Anniversary, I would like to offer a challenge to everyone here. The challenge is simple:
Finish your hack by July 1st, 2020

I think that we have a great community here, and we have become experts in this game. I'd like to see us come together AS a community and help each other finish off our projects. As such, I'd like you to post the following things in this thread:

1. Your hack's name
2. A 1-to 3-sentence summary of what your hack is trying to accomplish
3. What you need help on in order to finish
     a. Task 1
     b. Task 2
     c. Etc.
4. The skills that you can use to help others

As part of this challenge, I am going to try to ask for status updates at the beginning of each month asking what you accomplished in the past month.

I'll go first

1. Your hack's name: Final Fantasy VI - Divergent Paths
2. Divergent Paths is a complete hack that focuses on storyline what-ifs, such as "What if Edgar jumped in the river to save Sabin", or "What if Banon was killed instead of Leo". It incorporates the Full 16-Character Roster hack, as well as dozens of gameplay improvements. It is meant to be my Definitive take on FF6, and a 2nd take on the famous General Leo Edition hack.
3. What you need help on in order to finish
    a. I need to figure out which string of code covers in-battle equipment changes, so that I can finish off my Genji Glove equipment flag hack and incorporate it.
    b. I need someone willing to expand Gogo's skill selection menu to cover 1 or 2 more abilities.
    c. In a few months, I will need playtesters
4. The skills that you can use to help others: I am really good at event hacking and overall game system balancing. I've got a little bit of battle animation experience, and can help with editing sprites.


Projects:
FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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  • C-Dude (06-29-2019), Turbotastic (07-06-2019)

#2
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1. Hack Name: FFVI Prettify (subject to change)
2. Adding a VWF for everything that has a FWF. I have a proof of concept of regular, battle menu and scrolling lists. I want to redo the music player this way too as well as all existing menus. I might add bugfixes after that work is done. This is the original scope but it might grow bigger. I don't think I'll be done by July 2020 but I'll try hard.


3. Things I need help with:
  1. I need to write a VWF routine that draws a string right-aligned instead of left-aligned (for digits in menus).

4. I can code but my free time is limited so any help I would give would be a specific thing. I can do events too but since this is easier than ASM I'm expecting I would show the path instead of doing the actual event coding.
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#3
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I would like to offer a challenge

1:Hack name FFVI Enhanced

i would like to see if Fred can finish up making the FF6 Enhanced hack by july 1
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  • madsiur (06-29-2019)

#4
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1. Hack Name: ReCast

2. Hack Goal: I'm trying to diminish the art clash (Stick figures versus romance era paintings) by making everything stick figures... I've also tweaked characterization by dialogue, but not by events.  Not really looking to change the flow of the game with this hack (no event tweaks save using PowerPanda's 3 Scenarios), but I'm trying to make battle not only more aesthetically pleasing but more transparent with mechanics (such as enemy status display).

3. What I need help on in order to finish:

     a. I've got a proof-of-concept monster script that allows me to occasionally display an enemy's status (well, 12 of them).  It does this by casting a dummy spell at a random monster afflicted with that status, over a six-turn cycle (so on the first turn it checks for Sleep and Stop, the second for Mute and Slow, etc.).  Unfortunately, to implement this proof-of-concept requires adding said monster to EVERY formation, which throws a few wrenches into the works I've yet to work out (3 palette limit per formation, fewer enemies per formation, rescripting of bosses to handle the extra monster, reworking of "one monster type left" style battles and other peculiar scripts, and the fact that FF3SE refuses to work with my project rom anymore... ugh).  Ideally I'd like to replace the hidden status monster's casts with hex-coded forced casts by a monster taking its turn (a la Condemned expiration), but I don't know where a good insertion point for such code would be or how to stack more than one spell cast onto the wait menu.  So... someone with knowledge of forced spellcasts or someone with knowledge of formation limitations would be helpful.

     b. I need opinions about some of the monsters I've replaced, and some of the monsters that were left in a vanilla appearance.  My approach was to leave fantastic creatures alone while scaling mundane creatures down relative to the stick figure humans (which had some amusing results, especially with Ralph).  However, I didn't address any arthropods like the insects or crustaceans.  Should these too be minimized?  I'm also concerned some of my replacements don't work so well, such as Figaro cave which is full of skunks and old ladies.

4. Skills for Community: Uh... I kinda know how to extend concepts in raw hex?  For instance, I modified GrayShadow's Natural Abilities patch to allow for six natural learnsets instead of three.  I can proofread dialogue if needed, though I've been told in the past I'm too aggressive with my feedback (making changes instead of just writing notes).
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#5
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(06-29-2019, 08:56 PM)Mac68 3000 Wrote: i would like to see if Fred can finish up making the FF6 Enhanced hack by july 1

It's a dead hack mac. I won't go back to it ever.
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#6
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(06-29-2019, 09:05 PM)C-Dude Wrote: 3. What I need help on in order to finish:
     b. I need opinions about some of the monsters I've replaced, and some of the monsters that were left in a vanilla appearance.  My approach was to leave fantastic creatures alone while scaling mundane creatures down relative to the stick figure humans (which had some amusing results, especially with Ralph).  However, I didn't address any arthropods like the insects or crustaceans.  Should these too be minimized?  I'm also concerned some of my replacements don't work so well, such as Figaro cave which is full of skunks and old ladies.

Well, I can help with giving opinions.  Laugh


Projects:
FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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#7
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Check-in time! It's now been a little over a month since I posted this. What progress have you made? What do you need help with?


Projects:
FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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#8
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Well, I tried to hex the monster statuses over the Condemned auto-cast, and it... broke everything. So I've abandoned that approach and now I just have a bunch of busy work (setting up the status monster, putting it in _every_ formation, adjusting scripts to make sure it doesn't break bosses, and changing the monster graphics accordingly... oh, and I broke Chardanook, gotta fix that too).
I squashed all the typos, though (I think), so that's progress. Also shrunk most of the insects to 40-60% original size, so less art clash there (just haven't implemented them yet).

I do have some questions you can give me your opinion on, which will be helpful.
(1) How do you feel about Espers being free casts [0 MP]?
(2) Does TekLaser completely healing the enemy who cast it fill you with TERROR?!
(3) Should Demon, Goddess, and Spectre have tiny graphics like the monsters? ...Actually I might not even be able to do that, FF3SE seems to be finicky with the Goddess and Spectre graphics.
(4) How would you feel if Kefka countered ultimate spells and abilities with an unavoidable 'disappear' attack?

I'm picturing Kefka essentially sneezing someone out of battle and forcing you to use a backup... provided I can think up a way to force the team member cycling that's usually called when you switch phases.
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#9
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(08-02-2019, 07:53 PM)C-Dude Wrote: (1) How do you feel about Espers being free casts [0 MP]?

If it's limited to one cast per fight I'm sure you can find a way to balance this.

(08-02-2019, 07:53 PM)C-Dude Wrote: (2) Does TekLaser completely healing the enemy who cast it fill you with TERROR?!

Again, this is not balance breaking IMO.

(08-02-2019, 07:53 PM)C-Dude Wrote: (3) Should Demon, Goddess, and Spectre have tiny graphics like the monsters?

I think since they are important bosses they should use the 128x128 mould.

(08-02-2019, 07:53 PM)C-Dude Wrote: (4) How would you feel if Kefka countered ultimate spells and abilities with an unavoidable 'disappear' attack?

That could be interesting but he should still attack while being invisible or w/e to not slow down the fight for no reason.

On my project I made some progress. The main menu screen is finished and I'm now working on battle menus. I started with the magic menu and I hit as wall with some DMA transfer for spell name GFX, it's a bit a blocker right now but I'll try to debug it this month. Once one menu is done, the others (magitek, lore, tools, etc.) will be easy to do since they will use the same code.

[Image: 43qG1Cs.png]
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  • C-Dude (10-19-2019)

#10
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(08-02-2019, 07:53 PM)C-Dude Wrote: (1) How do you feel about Espers being free casts [0 MP]?
(2) Does TekLaser completely healing the enemy who cast it fill you with TERROR?!
(3) Should Demon, Goddess, and Spectre have tiny graphics like the monsters?  ...Actually I might not even be able to do that, FF3SE seems to be finicky with the Goddess and Spectre graphics.
(4) How would you feel if Kefka countered ultimate spells and abilities with an unavoidable 'disappear' attack?

I'm picturing Kefka essentially sneezing someone out of battle and forcing you to use a backup... provided I can think up a way to force the team member cycling that's usually called when you switch phases.

(1) Seems fine, as long as they're limited to once per battle.
(2) What's the reasoning behind this? Beware of making things hard just for the sake of being hard.
(3) Your hack is all about small sprites for ALL of the monsters, right? If so, I'd make their in-battle graphics the same as the overworld graphics.
(4) I'd hate it. This is the final boss; it's when you're supposed to use all of your strongest abilities and go all out. It's not the time to get clever with battle mechanics. Now, if you wanted to call the code that forces team member cycling every turn, rather than just during tier transitions, that would be fine. Just be aware that the code does a lot more than just removing characters. It resets your one-summon per battle and desperation attack counter. I can't remember if it also adds to Terra's morph supply, or if that was someone else's patch.


Projects:
FFVI: Divergent Paths (Completed) - a complete storyline and gameplay hack of FF6 that adds Leo as a playable character
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