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Final Fantasy VI SDK - Going Social!

@TheMadsiur

Battle Events will be handled mostly as they are handled in every other RPG Maker, in the Troop Editor. However, since I plan on integrating the event system to the Animation Editor, you will also be able to handle things in there too.

In the case of character movement, both editors (Animation and Troop editor) would be a valid place to do so. As you said, since there are no tiles in battle, the XY position will be screen pixel position, 0,0 being the top left corner of the screen. Right now I have 2 "Move Battler" option. The Absolute Move which blends the battler to X,Y and a Relative Move that blends relatively to its current position.

I will also support character facing, meaning that if you want the actor to move lets say 180 pixels in front of him, you will be able to do so. Useful when you want your event to make sense in every battle types such as Back Attack.

Also, as I said earlier, I want to implement the event system in many other places. The States Editor already supports "On State Applied" and "On State Removed" events. But obviously, not all event commands will be valid in all editors. So I will add an option to only show commands that are valid in the current context. Context means in which editor you currently are.
 
Time for a little update!

I recently had 3 weeks of vacation, so I spend a few days working almost only on item special effects, such as Orge Nix breaking, weapons that inflicts critical hits by using MPs, randomly cast spell and other features like that. I'm using Terii Senshi's algorythm as my "checklist" if you want to take a look! http://www.rpglegion.com/ff6/ff6alg.txt
Here's what has been done so far:
Randomly casts spell
3.2 Casts spell when used
3.3 Deals normal damage from the back row
3.4 Uses MP to do critical hits

3.5 Ignores Defense
3.6 Randomly kills enemy
3.7 Atma Weapon
3.8 Dice
3.9 Drainer
3.10 Fixed Dice
3.11 Hawk Eye
3.12 Heal Rod
3.13 Imp Halberd
3.14 Illumina
3.15 Man Eater
3.16 Ogre Nix
3.17 Scimitar
3.18 Sniper
3.19 Soul Sabre
3.20 Tempest
3.21 Thief Knife
3.22 Valiant Knife
3.23 Empty (Fists)

But more recently, I turned my self to the map exporter again. Giangurgolo has released a new version of the FF6LE (now called ZONE DOCTOR) that allows the user to see and modify events! And luckily for me it is still open source, so I took some time to check the code and see if it would be possible for me to export map events to RMXP, including the event commands. After a couple of hours, I managed to port my exporter to this (kind of) new editor and it's now able to export a few event commands! :D

I'll obviously continue working on it and try to export every event commands there is. Once this is done, I'll release my version of Zone Doctor along with an Alpha version of the SDK so you can try it out by yourself! :) Meanwhile, you can find Zone Doctor here: http://home.comcast.net/~giangurgolo/ff6/

If you have ideas on things to add to the exporter, feel free to share!

That's all for now!
- Dargor
 
This is great, Dargor. I still check this page almost daily, anxious to see where the project goes. :)

Will it be possible to add custom weapon effects to the finished product?
 
It will not be possible using only the editor, but if you're willing to do some ruby programming then sure, you can do anything you want!

Weapon effects are so specific and often unique to a single weapon that I almost feel like I have to add some sort of "weapon scripting" to control how the weapons behave. But in the end that would be too much work for no real gain. The plan is to have Effects flags, you can select pre-made effects such as "Atma Weapon", "Fixed Dice", etc. These pre-made effects will cover every effects you can find in the original game.

To integrate custom effects, you can use the Tag system. Every objects in the game can have tags. These are custom user-defined "options" that can be used however you want, as long as you are ready to code a little bit. For example, you can create the "Black Magic" tag, and in the Spell editor specify that "Fire" has the "Black Magic" tag. In the system options, you have the possibility to filter what is visible in the spell window using tags. So you can have the spell window display only items that have the White, Black or Grey Magic tag.

But this example is actually a feature of the SDK, no need to code anything. What if you want to do something that the SDK does not already do? Going back to the weapon effects, you could create a "Water Elemental Weapon" tag, and in the damage calculation code, do something like
Ruby:
 # Check if the weapon currently used by attacker has the "Water Elemental Weapon" tag and make sure the battle background is an "Underwater" background.

if attacker.action.weapon.tags.include?("Water Elemental Weapon") && BattleManager.background.is_underwater?

  damage *= 2 # Double the damage

end

This is hypothetical code, but you get the idea!
- Dargor
 
String tags is the one thing that pisses me off most about some game engines, if you're going to do that could you please make it so we can define "Water Elemental Weapon" and it generates a unique numeric ID that can be pulled as WATER_ELEMENTAL_WEAPON or something?


...I have such a strong hatred for text tags...It's on my list of bad code designs


EDIT: Or even just let us define a list of tags like how RM already lets us do with defining elements and those tags be accessible in an array in RGSS
 
It will most likely end up being FF6::Tag objects and not strings. Don't worry, I hate that too and it was just an example. Another solution would be to handle them as RPG Maker handles Elements.

Edit: I didn't saw your edit, seems like we're in sync about that! It's a lot less flexible than having an object for tags, but at the moment I can't think of any benefits with having a Tag object.
 
The only benefit for tag object is inheriting tags, so the tag SWORD can be inherited by FLAME_SWORD so it gains all of SWORD's features, however I would even disagree with this approach as bit-packing could be achieved if you can support long integers.

By using a collection of functions that mask bit-wise operations, you'd be able to have multiple tags under one number number.
 
Hi,
I just discovered your project. A few years ago, I worked on a sequel of Final Fantasy VI on RPG Maker 2003 that was abandoned.
I try your Map Exporter, but I have an assembly error (Microsoft.Scripting). Do you know why this error happen?
 
Hello gmessier!

This is most likely because I forgot to include that library and/or I didn't not compiled the editor properly with that library. I don't know if your case is special (I doubt it) but it's the first time someone reported an error so thanks! I won't be fixing it in this version since I'm working on another one (as I have mentioned above) but the next one should be OK.

Have a good day!
- Dargor
 
Je prend la chance d'écrire en français puisque tu viens du Québec. J'ai finalement réussi à exporter des cartes en copiant le "Microsoft.Scripting.dll" d'un autre programme. C'est actuellement en cours d'exportation. Je ne sais pas pourquoi le fichier original ne fonctionnait pas chez moi.
 
@gmessier
Content de savoir que ca fonctionne! :)

I'm not investing much time in the exporter at the moment since I'm trying to finish the SDK as soon as possible. Next December will mark the 7th "anniversary" of the SDK so I really want this done before it reaches 10 years of production! :P However, I also plan releasing the exporter with as many features as possible, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to share them!

- Dargor
 
@Psychokiller
Unfortunately I have not much to share. I've fixed a couple of things here and there, tried to optimize the frame rate in a couple of scenes, etc. Nothing too exciting.
I'm currently setting up a project on SourceForge.net for the SDK. By doing this I will be able to keep everybody informed about any kind of progress I make, I'll upload new versions from time to time so everybody can test it, and also, I'll let people create tickets (bug reports). I think that would benefit everybody, it would also help me stay organized. :)

Eventually, I'll do the same for the editor. But for now, the focus is on the game code. I'll be back early January with news on the subject!

Until then, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
- Sasha "Dargor" Boutin
 
Hey Dargor! Sorry I did not respond sooner, but these forums are fairly laid back anyway, I guess.

At any rate, worry not if your progress is slow or not on what you think people want you to work on. Each part is as necessary a piece of the whole as any other. It is good to hear you're still working at it. :)

I look forward to your next update.
 
I got super excited when I found out that this project was still hoing even when his website hasn't been updated.... but Now I'm a little worried. He said he was gonna be back early janurary with an Update, but it's almost the middle of March. Anyone hear anything?

EDIT: Also, I'm trying to grab the most recent version of the pre-alpha but when I go to the site, it only has the 2011 one. Is that the most recent?
 
@Royaken
I can relate.
Dragor has made a lot of progress into this and a lot of people are looking forward to this project, I just hope that this project doesn't get abandoned. :unsure:
 
I, too, am one anxious for this, and I too am worried about it. ):
I've been following this for years...! ;______;
Made an account just to ask for you not to stop, please! ;_;
 
Dargor's been online in March, so he's still around, at least :smile: I hope this continues too, it's one of the most inspirational RM projects out there.
 
Hey Guys!

Sorry for the lack of update, but it's been like that for the pasy year or two. I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to this project but as I have stated before, this is my biggest and most important project ever and I'm not going to abandon it.

You can't immagine how much I appreciate your support and I'm always surprised when I see that people are still interrested in this project.
Well, you are the reason why I'm still going on! :)

For those who are new to this, I restarted everything from scratch back in 2011 for various reasons and I'm still working on what I started back then.
I have decided that I would not release demos or communicate any of my internal milestones until I have something to show that works very well.

That being sais, I do have a little something to share with you!
I've completely rewritten the Map Editor this time using XNA and I have optimized it quite a bit. This editor has always been the hardest thing to get right, most of the time it was really slow, but now whatever the size of the map, it's super fast and very responsive and I'm very happy about it! There's still a few things missing such as the Rectangle and Elipse tools but other than that, the map editor is working pretty well.

The next big thing I'm going to tackle full time is the event editor. I already have it showing up and it's displaying all the commands. Now I have to make it editable and code all the various command windows.

The script editor is already working so that big chunk is out of the way!

And finally I'll move on to the Database. Once I get all of these done, in a "good enough" state, I'll try to release a demo of the editor, including the game code, obviously! Otherwise what's the point eh?

As far as the game code is concerned, what's left to be done is mostly very small features, details, tweaks and bug fixing. It does not seem like much but it eats a lot of my time. For instance, the "monster appearing" part of the battle system is not in yet. It's small and easy thing to forget, but also easy to implement, yet it relies on another system that's not ready for production (an entirely new FX System).

It's going very slowly, but it's still alive and I will continue working on it. I admit that I suck at posting updates, but livf's not giving me much time to do so!
I'll try to dedicate a day per week to the SDK and posting updates.

That's pretty much it!
- Dargor
 
Exciting! Thanks for the update Dargor. I thought you might like to know that I am still following this project and hoping for the eventual release. FF6 never seems to get much older and I'd love the opportunity to explore the system as you are re-developing it.
 

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