Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2007 8:41 pm
You don't think that's emulating Chrono Trigger a bit too much?
gorzuate wrote:You don't think that's emulating Chrono Trigger a bit too much?
Roots wrote:THE PROBLEM
This proposal was made because our current battle system is very taxing on our artists. The sprites are very large and doing animations with them using traditional 2D methods has proved to be fruitless due to the complexity.
Jetryl wrote:Here's the picture, and this is what I'm suggesting. As you can see, there's tons of space for different characters; easily enough for the 4 we were slated to have in the current design. This should give you an idea of what I'm gunning for.
gorzuate wrote:Over time we have come to learn that finding coders is a piece of cake,
gorzuate wrote:You don't think that's emulating Chrono Trigger a bit too much?
gorzuate wrote:Over time we have come to learn that finding coders is a piece of cake, and finding artists is PITA.
gorzuate wrote:Of course, split this off into a separate branch of the SVN repository.
KaelisEbonrai wrote:In essence, Jetryl..
3 Years ago, there was a dicussion.
1) Chrono Trigger style?
2) Final Fantasy style?
the developers chose option number 2, THREE years ago. And, as such, the game has been designed around that idea.
Three years in, you, decide to further your own goals, and suggest the same choice again.
A choice that everyone who has signed onto the project in the past 3 years, has already *chosen*. They chose the Final Fantasy style.
3 years in, changing the core gameplay type, is insanity.
3 years.. in which a (j)crpg has been developed. To change the game to an action (j)crpg... is insanity. The change would virtually involve a rethink of the game from the ground up.
And, in spite of what you say, it would require *more* work for the artists. I should know. Before you say something about me knowing nothing about art.. I'm an artist, myself.
This discussion is for the purpose of simplifying the workload, not about a vast increase of it.
3 years in, mate. You don't do this kind of change 3 years in.
And, in spite of what you say, it would require *more* work for the artists. I should know. Before you say something about me knowing nothing about art.. I'm an artist, myself.
3 years.. in which a (j)crpg has been developed. To change the game to an action (j)crpg... is insanity. The change would virtually involve a rethink of the game from the ground up.
I should not have discussed this until I was done with the code and images to make it
one code module, which we can actually salvage about 30-40% of.
Jetryl wrote:And, in spite of what you say, it would require *more* work for the artists. I should know. Before you say something about me knowing nothing about art.. I'm an artist, myself.
This is only true if we assume that the map-mode sprites would have very limited animations. I would be unsatisfied with that; they're going to have full movement in every direction, and will have animated standing frames to boot. This, in addition to other one-off animations of monsters performing various "idling" actions (hopping up and down, rooting in the ground, etc). That's what's needed to make map-mode interesting to look at.
About all we need on top of this, to make the battle mode I've described, is a single animation of them striking in each of three directions (N,S,Side). Additional animations would make things look nicer, but that's all we need, and that's already considerably more than our current battle mode has. That's pretty easy to do.
3 years.. in which a (j)crpg has been developed. To change the game to an action (j)crpg... is insanity. The change would virtually involve a rethink of the game from the ground up.
Jetryl wrote:
What we lose out of our existing content/code is:
- about nine still images of monsters standing.
- about 1-2 background images of battle scenes.
- one code module, which we can actually salvage about 30-40% of.Hardly a "remake of the whole game".
gorzuate wrote:KaelisEbonrai, your reasoning may have some merits to it, but it's worthwhile to note that 3 years ago we had no idea what the art requirements would be and whether they would even be feasible. If we set everything in stone from the beginning it's safe to say we would no longer be around.
Jetryl wrote:I should not have discussed this until I was done with the code and images to make it. It has spawned a bunch of discussion which would have been annulled by that being done.
Jetryl wrote:Thus far, we have had a failure to act on the existing design decision. We have had three years to complete it, and our accomplishments on battle mode have been pretty pathetic. This is in no small part due to the fact that I have not been helping with that (since I judged it to be unfeasible).
Jetryl wrote: I don't like going against a team's decision, but when the team has decided to do something unfeasible, their decision isn't going to magically make it happen. I'm especially unwilling to do it when the team's decision is something that _I_ have to accomplish the bulk of the work on, and which I don't even like, and where my only payment for it is having a result I'm happy with.
Jetyrl wrote:What we lose out of our existing content/code is:
ChopperDave wrote:The whole point of trying the new method is to see in the end which battle system people prefer. And by people I mean the general public who will be playing, not us. We already knew weeks ago who objected to this approach and why, so I'm not sure why this is even being discussed. Jetryl wants to try this so let him. Everyone else, go back to doing what you were doing and let this thread die.
Roots wrote:ChopperDave wrote:The whole point of trying the new method is to see in the end which battle system people prefer. And by people I mean the general public who will be playing, not us. We already knew weeks ago who objected to this approach and why, so I'm not sure why this is even being discussed. Jetryl wants to try this so let him. Everyone else, go back to doing what you were doing and let this thread die.
I have to agree with CD here. I thought the purpose of this thread was what design do we use for now, since we're obviously stuck and can't bring the art content for battle mode forward. And since Jetryl is determined to implement his own designs no matter the cost, I propose we pursue the solution that does the best job of ameliorating the artwork production cost while minimizing the amount of additional design and programming work for battle mode. I feel that that is the best way we can keep the battle mode development train moving. Therefore, I propose:
Keep everything in battle mode the same as it is for now, but remove the separate battle sprites for characters (but not enemies) and replace those with the character's map sprites enlarged by 2X.
Can we at least agree on doing that for now?
KaelisEbonrai wrote:You forgot a somewhat important piece.
Game Design, level design, and gameplay.
Action-(J)CRPGs don't play the same, and don't have the same design considerations as (J)CRPGs, the level design needs to, in essence, allow for combat within it. You /will/ need to rethink the design, action-(j)crpgs don't port directly over to (j)crpgs, without design changes.