[VX] Final Fantasy IV-II: Skill Demo Here!

If you mean after King Grigor has his solo battle...

Woops, I missed this part! I thought that there is no more gameplay after getting airship...
Well, that's for good, because I now go into Demeter again and find one more bug: map 226 Demeter Ruins, you can't reach transfer event in place with two green chests, so, it's dead end.

Shandril joined Donal's party (when I first visit Oakhaven).

Are you sure? It's rather hidden. On the other hand, I could have accidentally set it to the wrong priority. Well, I'll take care of that, along with the Dwarven area and Wendy's Tomb. Those areas were confusing me, untill I figured out where I went wrong with the tileswapper. Shandril shouldn't join Donal; she's dependant on a switch that shouldn't be tripped untill the party reaches Earthfont... something is definitely wrong, there.

As for moving forward, tonight I'm going to collect some resources that will go on the various custom tilesets I already have; just for more depth to those areas, and also for some as-yet unmapped areas.

I don't have a deadline for 4.1 just yet, it's a busy week and I have a lot of testing and fixing to do. Rest assured, however, that the project is on track and will be seeing updates as I am able to provide them.

EDIT: Aha. Now I see what you meant with the Demeter and Demon's Demise passages. Fixed, and good catch.

Alright, I have the extended targetting enabled, which means that there will be some changes made to the skill DB. Now targetting works just like in FF IV, so the need for exclusive multi-target spells has been eliminated! This also means that Cure spells will hurt undead, and you can target your friends with lightning if you wish.

I have also been working on some monsters for Demeter and Earthfont areas. The player will be sufficiently powerful to throw some interesting beasties at him/her, so I can have some fun with the monster capabilities.

Spoiler for I can't believe I forgot this:

Playtested through and found some minor bugs, all fixed now. Added multi-target skills to the script responsible for their functions and animation tags to bows, guns, thrown weapons and the Jump skill.

Now to test the skills and see if they all work as intended, followed by animations!

U have date when this game is 100% complete and ready to play throught? Cant wait ^^

Thank you! No date yet,; the time I have to work on this project is sporadic at best. However, work has been progressing well lately,and is around halfway done right now. Version 4.1 will be released as soon as the muti-target script is configured and some skills are tested, as well as the next dungeon complete. It will be big, the "boss" is one of the major enemies in the game.

Skills and equipment are getting a makeover, as well as the addition of some more cutscenes to help the story along. Right now I'm working on the finer aspects of playtesting- thanks to some help from AlexArmstrong,  playtesting isn't too hard.

I CAN tell you that the next installment should be done by the end of March middle of April.

Progress update: Added script to give characters "Desperation" attacks, credit to Zylos.

Added pause option and screen saver after 60 seconds of inactivity.

Looped world map BGM, battle BGM and one town BGM. What a pain in the ass that was.

Next big hurdle is animations for all the skills and desperations.

Development will be put on ludicrous speed for the upcoming (and hopefully favorable) review of the project by our own Logan! Even though he made it clear he only cares about himself... jerk. JUST KIDDING, LOGAN!

Expect to see version 4.1 within the next week and a half, and expect to see some really groovy improvements- in sound, mapping, eventing, and gameplay.

Completed a sizable portion of animations, icluding two entire skillsets and 3 desperation attacks. I'm working a lot in the next few days, so further work may be stalled untill the weekend.

Left to do before 4.1 release
Animation of the relevant skills up to the demo end (about 20 skills)
Inserting all proper triggers for Warp and Exit
Remodeling the first cutscene with an improved tileset
Equipment and skill balancing
Proper assignment of skills to characters by level
Insertion of two additional short cutscenes
Playtest through to find and fix bugs

Should be ready to go by the 14th.

Hey. I have been on hiatus for a while,and said hiatus may return at any time. In the meantime, however, I'm getting back to work on this as I can when I can. Thought I'd say something.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO PRODUCTION

Hey there. As I am looking for things to give me direction right now, I have begun work on finishing the additional tilesets and skill animations in the DB. This will take some time, as several are required to give both characters and monsters the "feel" of the console-style FF games. Once I tire of the graphics work, harder nuts will be cracked.

Those tough nuts include modifying the newest Tankentai SBS to allow monsters to be replaced in battle, a vital process for the Toad, Piggy and Small spells. Ordinarily, the method would be simple, but something in the main script of the SBS is preventing it from happening.

Several skill animations done; about 2/3 total animation library complete. Not a whole lot of time to work on this project lately, something gets done every day even if it's as small as balancing an item's stats or price.

Production back online for awhile, and animations are getting good! Of course, I may be going overboard, but we'll see after it's all done.

Also have more BGM looping done. That's a pain too.

M00s, was gonna give the demo a try, but uh text is not showing.
I assume you left out a font folder? Also the game starts with no cutscene and I appear right next to an abandoned castle looking area with four full party members.
Not sure if this is suposed to happen, just to me it looks like you may have changed the player start location for debugging purposes and forgot to switch it back.

I did. There ought to be a font folder in the DL package somwewhere... and I could have sworn I had moved the player positions back to normal. Lemme fix that.

Aha, I thought i saw this earlier. Should you choose to do so, set party members to "dummy" only, and place start position on the map labeled "intro" somewhere in the middle.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJvdQqmzBU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJvdQqmzBU</a>

If you'd like me to do more or stop altogether, let me know.

*wipes tears of mirth from eyes* D&P3 for narrator of all time.

I never thought of Laz as Scottish, but alright. I Like what I see so far, dude. Of course, this is an older version, which is admittedly buggy as heck... and yes, the chests are needed to give the player (who would normally start off as level one) a basis to wage war with.

Yeah, save point didnt work right.... fixed in the last version. You did nothing wrong, per se, the levels were simply not reset. I intended for THAT release to be like a tech demo.

A lot of the items you find, like the Elf Water, will be used for crafting purposes, and an in game tutorial guides you through that.

Tell you what, lemme set up a less buggy version and then by all means continue. I'd like a 3rd party running critique of the development. Which I suppose means I'll have to deliver.

I can't play the demo since I don't have the VX RTP, would be nice if you could include a demo version that does. Watched the playthrough video posted above, though. There seemed to be a ton of chests in your dungeon, but I guess it works well as an incentive for players to walk around a bit and get into random encounters before they leave the place.
Small thing I noticed was Phoenix Down was spelled incorrectly (Pheonix in your game).

Alright, maybe I'll tone down all the chests, and include more basic potions. I'll also include the RTP in the next release.

THanks for taking interest, and for finding the spelling erreore error.

Today's update: 3 more BGMs looped, 6 more skills input and animated. Fixed a few spelling errors. Reduced the number of chests in the Bintel Dungeons. Added dialogue soliloquy in first dungeon to explain controls and other important aspects of gameplay. Fixed entry to places the player shouldnt go. Cleaned up the first few cutscenes and made some minor script and story tweaks to make story flow more smoothly.

Deadline for skill demo: 28 Jan 2013. Might actually make this deadline.

If you plan on fixing up the little spelling error for the Phoenix Down, I'd imagine it'd be a real pain the arse to fix up all those messages for your treasure chests.
I made a little snippet for you that will fix that. However it will only work for "Show Text" Messageboxes, you'll still need to apply a fix yourself to the actual item name in the database.

Code: [Select]

class Window_Message < Window_Selectable
  alias wm_csc_pheonix_to_phoenix_conversion       convert_special_characters
  def convert_special_characters
    wm_csc_pheonix_to_phoenix_conversion()
    @text.gsub!(/Pheonix/i) { "Phoenix" }
  end
end

Nice to see this coming along, M00s. I'll have to give the new demo a nosy at when I can.

D&P3: Damn, you smart. Thank you for the code- so I just post it where my other scrips are?

Logan: Thank you very much, man. I'm really excited and hopeful that this run will give us a balanced, fun game without any game-breaking bugs.

After the skill demo I'll move on to fixing up gameplay itself and may have a play demo up to Earthfont Cavern within February- perhaps even beyond!